Suddenly (36 page)

“What’s wrong?” Noah asked from behind. He had pulled on slacks, but they weren’t fastened. His chest was bare.

“It’s just a cold, but enough to make her miserable. She doesn’t understand what’s wrong or what to do to fix it. Not that there is much,” she murmured, and headed for the bathroom, where she wet a cloth and wiped the child’s face.

“Will she take something to drink?” Noah asked when she returned to Sami’s room.

“Maybe. I’ll go down for a bottle after I change her.”

“I’ll get the bottle. What should I put in it?”

Nothing, Paige wanted to say. I don’t need your help. I’m perfectly able to take care of myself. I’ve been doing it a lot longer than I’ve known you. Which, from a sensible, level-headed woman, was absurd. “Apple juice. She likes that.”

“Is everything all right?” Nonny asked from the door. She was a petite wraith in a white nightgown and shawl, who suddenly saw Noah. “Oh, my. I didn’t know we had guests.”

Paige sighed. “Not guests, Nonny. Just Noah.”

“And not exactly dressed for the weather, I see. I hope she isn’t going to kick you out at dawn this time, Noah. Since it’s Sunday. And since I already know you’re here.”

To Noah, Paige complained, “This was how it was when I was growing up. I’d tiptoe around her about something, then find that she knew about it all along.”

Nonny had shuffled to the changing table in her tiny white mules and was feeling Sami’s forehead. “Is my pumpkin hot again?”

“No. She must have been frightened when she woke up all stuffy. Noah’s going down for a bottle. You go back to bed.”

“And miss the fun?”

“Nonny.”

“I’m going, I’m going.” She shuffled out of the room.

Noah went down for the bottle. By the time he returned, Sami was cleaned up. Paige sat on the rocker and let her drink, while Noah leaned against the crib and watched.

“You did this just right,” she said softly. “I’d have thought you’d be rusty.”

“I always loved feeding Sara.”

“Did you do it much?”

“Whenever I could.”

Paige continued to rock. Sami, who was helping hold the bottle, took it out of her mouth and rubbed tiny teeth against her lips. “No more?” Paige asked. “Not even a little? For Mommy?” The mouth opened and the nipple went back inside. “That’s my girl.”

Sami drank most of the juice before taking the nipple out of her mouth for good. Paige set aside the bottle and rocked her a bit longer. Then she put her on her side in the crib, drew up a blanket, and rubbed her back.

“You enjoy her, don’t you?” Noah asked. He was standing close beside her.

“She’s a sweetie.” But it wasn’t Sami of whom she was most aware just then. It was Noah. The warmth of him was a physical thing, a lure when she didn’t want to be lured.

“Have you thought any more about adopting her?”

“No.”

“Not in your game plan, either?”

Paige didn’t answer. As she rubbed Sami’s back, she tried to remember what life had been like before Mara had died. Two and a half months. It hardly seemed possible.

Mara would have said that Paige would be insane not to accept Noah’s proposal, because the deep connect was everything.

Maybe it was. But it scared the living daylights out of Paige.

Noah touched her arm. “I think she’s asleep.”

Paige nodded. She let him drape an arm on her shoulder and guide her down the stairs, because it was so
lovely
to be guided rather than to guide all the time; but when they were in her bedroom and he turned her to him and took a breath to speak, she put a hand to his mouth.

“Don’t say anything. I can’t think about the future now, Noah. Not yet. What’s happened between us is new for me. Can’t we just enjoy it, just enjoy the here and now?”

It was easier said than done, because the words had been spoken and couldn’t be taken back. The following afternoon, leaving Nonny and Noah with Sami, Paige slipped into her room and curled up on the love seat with Mara’s thoughts on men.

“We had such problems, Daniel and I, right from the start,” she wrote.

Paige was stunned, she had never imagined Mara with Nowell.

Paige lowered the letter.

“Who’s it from?” Noah asked from the door.

Once before she had put him off. She didn’t see any reason to do it now. “Mara. After she died, I found bundles of letters in her house. They’re kind of like a diary. She wrote them over a period of years.”

“What’s in them?”

“Different things. Some are personal. Others are more philosophical. I’ve learned things about her that I never knew. It’s sad. She was such a close friend.” She frowned, haunted still by all she hadn’t known about this close friend. “It makes you wonder whether any of us know, really
know
, the people we’re with all the time.”

“Of course we do,” Noah said kindly. “But there are always those people who, for whatever their reasons, shield part of themselves. It’s not that they’re dishonest, just that they don’t always tell the whole truth.”

“If I’d known the whole truth, I might have been able to help.”

“If Mara was one to tell the whole truth, your help might not have been needed. She would have been healthier and stronger.”

Paige knew he was right. She gave the letter a nudge. “I keep thinking of the isolation she must have felt when she was writing these.”

“It’s too bad she didn’t just give them to you at the time she wrote them.”

“Oh, they’re not written to me. They’re written to someone else.” Saying it, she felt a new wave of guilt.

“To a friend?”

“I guess.” And Paige was a voyeur on the thoughts Mara shared. “Someone back in Eugene. Mara never mentioned her to me.” She shot Noah a contrite look. “I know. I should package them up and send them on, and I will. I just want to read them a while longer. They make me feel closer to Mara. They help me to understand her death.”

“Did this friend come to her funeral?”

Paige shook her head. “Only Mara’s parents and three of her brothers came from Eugene.”

“Do you think she knows that Mara is dead?”

“Good Lord, I hope she does. I assume she found out.” But the guilt swelled again. “There haven’t been any telephone messages from an old friend since Mara died. I mean, it’s been two and a half months. If the two of them kept in touch, she would have tried to call. Wouldn’t she have?”

“If they kept in touch, she would have,” Noah reasoned. “But maybe they didn’t. That would explain why Mara never mailed the letters.”

“Then why did she write them?” Paige asked.

“She needed the outlet.”

“But why to
this
person?” And why not to Paige? There was some hurt in that, Paige realized. Perhaps even envy. Surely, though, she hadn’t kept the letters to deliberately deprive Lizzie Parks of something she wanted for herself.

Or had she?

Stricken, she took her address book from the nightstand and punched out the number of Mara’s parents in Eugene. Mary O’Neill answered the phone. Paige had spoken with her several times in the course of disposing of Mara’s things. Now, after a cordial greeting, she said, “I have some papers here, Mrs. O’Neill. They’re actually letters written by Mara to a Lizzie Parks.” She gave the address. “I’d like to send them on. Do you think Lizzie’s still at this address?”

There was a silence at the other end of the phone. Paige imagined that Mary O’Neill was trying to decide if the address was indeed correct or, alternately, that she was flipping through a phone book to check.

As it happened, Mary O’Neill was doing neither of those things. In an awkward voice she said, “No. There’s no Lizzie at that address. There’s no Lizzie at all.”

With horror, Paige imagined that Lizzie Parks, too, had died. “What do you mean?”

“There never was a Lizzie. Not in real life. When Mara was little she used to pretend she had a cousin just her age who lived here in Eugene. But there never was any cousin. Lizzie Parks was Mara’s imaginary friend.”

Paige’s hand shook. She bowed her head and pressed her free fingers to her forehead. “Oh,” she said in a small voice. “Well. That solves the mystery, then.” An imaginary friend. “Thank you. I’m sorry I bothered you,” she said, and hung up the phone.

She studied the letter she still held in her hand, until the script blurred. Noah, too, was blurred when she raised her eyes. “No Lizzie Parks. She was an imaginary friend.”

Avoiding him, she went to the love seat, gathered the rest of the letters that had been in the packet, and retied the yarn that held them together.

Noah lowered himself beside her. “She was an unhappy woman.”

Paige swore softly and lowered her head. “An imaginary friend.”

“Others have them.”

“In their late thirties?”

“Sometimes. These letters aren’t much different from what many adults write, only they call it a journal. So Mara wrote her journal in letter form, and put a name at the top. It’s just a difference in style. That’s all.”

But Paige was devastated. “An imaginary friend. She must have been that much more lonely that any of us ever imagined.”

“That’s not your fault, Paige.” He drew her close. “You were nearby. She might have taken advantage of you if she’d wanted to. Same with all the other people who liked her so much. But she chose to keep her thoughts to herself.”

Paige supposed. “Mara was pulled in two different directions, one dictated by her past, one by her present. To satisfy the first meant repudiating the second, and vice versa. It was a no-win situation. She was bound to fail.” She pressed her face to Noah’s collarbone and took a shuddering breath. “I feel so very, very, very bad for her.”

The telephone rang. Paige didn’t move at first. Noah was a comfort. But when the second ring came, her sense of duty took over. “Hello?”

“Dr. Pfeiffer?”

“Yes.”

“This is Anthony Perrine, Noah’s father.”

She glanced at Noah. “Dr. Perrine. How are you?”

“I’m well, but I’m afraid there’s a problem. A short time ago, I received a call from Sara’s mother. Sara has disappeared. Liv has been trying to reach Noah without any luck. I thought he might be with you.”

“He is. Right here.” She put the phone to Noah’s ear. His hand covered hers there.

“Yes, Dad?”

Paige watched his face grow somber, then angry.

“Liv doesn’t
know
how long she’s been gone?” He listened. “Swell.” To Paige he said, “Liv slept late. She hasn’t seen her since last night.” To his father he said, “Where has she looked?” He listened, pushing his glasses higher on his nose. “I’ll start calling her Mount Court friends. I don’t think there are any in the Bay area, but I’ll work my way eastward. She could have thumbed, God help her.”

The doorbell rang. Paige let Nonny answer it.

“Have her call every one of the old friends that Sara might have contacted while she was there,” Noah told his father. “Where would she have gone lugging that huge duffel bag? And why would she have run off that way? Did Liv say they’d been arguing?”

Paige put her ear to the phone but couldn’t make out the answer. So she whispered, “Ask if she left any clues—matchbooks, telephone numbers thrown in the wastebasket, bus schedules.”

Noah nodded. He held her gaze while he listened to what his father was saying, then he related Paige’s suggestions. “Sara wouldn’t want to just vanish. She’s not—”

“An unhappy child,” Paige said into the mouthpiece. “She’s adjusted well at Mount Court. She likes it here. If anything—”

“I’d imagine her getting on the first plane out of San Francisco—”

“And flying back here,” she finished.

“Hi, guys,” came a voice from the door.

Paige and Noah swung around to face Sara, who was grinning from ear to ear.

Noah let out a sigh of relief. While Paige left his side and wrapped her arms around Sara, he told his father, “She just walked in. She looks fine.” He cleared his throat. “I’m dying to hear how she got here. Do me a favor and call Liv, Dad? Tell her I’ll talk with her another time.” He hung up the phone.

Paige was still holding Sara—protecting her, she fancied, from whatever punishment Noah had in mind. Then Noah’s arms encircled them both, and she released her breath.

Noah wanted to be angry at Sara but couldn’t. She hadn’t gone to see a friend; she had come home to him. That meant the world to him. Moreover, when she explained that she had taken a cab to the airport, changed her ticket to a flight one day earlier, and taken another cab first to Mount Court, then to Paige’s, he couldn’t find much fault. She had used common sense. At no time had she done anything dangerous—thoughtless, perhaps, in that she’d given her mother a scare, but she’d been angry. It seemed that Liv had done little more than spend Thanksgiving Day with Sara. She had a new boyfriend, with whom she spent most of her time. Sara had been very much on her own.

Noah was furious at Liv, though not surprised. She was a selfish woman. He had every intention of telling her so when they spoke.

“She told me to visit my friends,” Sara said, holding Sami on her lap, while Noah, Paige, and Nonny sat nearby, “but there wasn’t anybody to see. My two closest friends were away, and the others didn’t want to see me any more than I wanted to see them. I wanted to say hi to Jeff—he was my stepdad for so long and I have his name, for God’s sake—but she forbade it. So there was nothing to do. I figured that I could just as well do nothing here.”