Sweet Liar (39 page)

“Oh yes. The next day, I told my mother how pretty her hair was and how blue her eyes were. I told her I was pleased she didn't look old like my friends' mothers who were without exception fat and ugly. I told her she should dress like the beauty she was. She smiled at me and asked what I had in mind, so I told her I remembered seeing a dress on a mannequin in the window of Stewart's Department Store that would look fabulous on her.”

“And she took you back downtown?”

“She said that such sincere flattery and such cleverness in trying to get what I wanted deserved to be rewarded, but she warned me that there had better actually be a dress in Stewart's window or I'd catch it.”

“I guess there was.”

“I sweat all the way downtown. I was afraid Stewart's would have a display of men's clothes only, but they didn't let me down. I got my red shoes and Mom got a new dress.” Samantha was silent for a moment. “It was the dress she was buried in.”

Mike continued holding her, continued stroking her hair, continued listening to one story after another, but with each story his resolve hardened. Blair had suggested that Samantha go to therapy. For what? So some guy could tell her over and over that it wasn't her fault that her mother died? Tell her that her father's depression wasn't her fault? It was going to take more than words to make Sam actually
believe
that what had happened wasn't her fault.

Somewhere in one of her stories she mentioned how her father had brought Richard Sims home for her to meet. It took Mike a few questions to realize that she'd married him mainly because her father seemed to have wanted her to. And why not? She'd dedicated her life from the age of twelve to twenty-three to her father in an attempt to make it up to him for what she thought she'd done to him, so why not marry to try to please him?

Her father's attorney had said that Sam gave up all her outside life to spend time with her father and help him with his depression. Sam had been so isolated during that time that the attorney thought maybe Samantha had been the victim of incest, but he hadn't wanted to get involved so he didn't really know for sure.

Alone from the time she was twelve, without her mother who had been, as far as Mike could tell, her best friend, Sam had had no one to turn to, but she'd tried to be the best little girl in the world in an attempt to make her father love her again. It was understandable that she'd marry whomever he wanted her to marry. Maybe marrying a man chosen by her father would make him love her again.

When Samantha's marriage had turned sour, she'd had no one to turn to. She couldn't very well call her father and tell him that the man he'd chosen for her—and Mike found out that it was Dave Elliot who had funded Richard's share in the CPA office in Santa Fe—was using her like a pack mule. Since Sam had spent her childhood isolated and burdened with secrets, she'd not learned how to make friends, friends she could tell her problems to.

Thinking back to the first month she'd been in his house, he now understood her depression, understood why she'd wanted to retreat into a room and never come out again. Retreat into her father's room, he thought. Her father had deserted her when he was alive, but maybe she'd hoped to find him after he was dead.

Over and over again the question of what could he do went through his mind. What could he do to make Sam realize that her mother's death wasn't her fault? That Dave's depression wasn't her fault? Mike had heard that depression was anger turned inward. What could he do to make her turn that anger outward? He wanted to see her smash things, wanted to hear her curse her father for deserting her, wanted to hear her scream about what her ex-husband had done to her. He wanted to see her cry.

Getting up from the chaise, he carried her into the house. Samantha thought he was going to take her to bed, and she hoped he was because she was very, very tired. Instead, he started for the front door.

“Where are we going?” she asked tiredly.

“I'm taking you to your grandmother. I think it's time for the charade to stop; I think it's time for some questions to be answered.”

I
t was morning when Mike returned to Maxie's room at the nursing home. Not that he'd left the place last night. After he'd taken Sam to her grandmother last evening, he'd told Maxie that she was to tell Sam the truth. Mike had said that life was too short, too much an unknown, for the two of them to continue pretending not to know who the other was. He'd been angry and he may have said some things he shouldn't have, but Sam needed her grandmother for as long as she had her—and Maxie needed Sam.

He'd left them alone after that, and they had spent most of the night talking while Mike had spent the night, sleeping very little, on a hard cot in what was euphemistically called the “guest lounge.” Mike didn't know what they had talked about for so many hours, but every time he had checked on them throughout the long night they were still at it.

“How is she?” Mike asked when he entered, looking at Sam curled into Maxie's arms. He hadn't shaved and he was still wearing the clothes, now rumpled, dirty, and wrinkled, that he'd worn when they saw Walden yesterday. Smiling, he looked at Samantha, sleeping the way one slept after great emotional trauma: with her mouth slightly open, her breath hiccuping now and then, her limbs as flaccid as an infant's.

Moving forward, Mike said, “Here, let me take her. She's heavy and your arm must be dead by now.”

For a split second, Maxie gave him a look of such ferocity that he took a step backward. When he recovered himself, he grinned at her. “I guess she's not too heavy after all.”

Embarrassed, Maxie chuckled. “No, she's not too heavy. I wish I could have held her when she was a child. I wish I'd been there after—”

“After her mother died?”

Maxie looked away, for she knew that Allison's death had been her fault, for if she hadn't married Cal, the Elliot family would have had no connection with Doc and Half Hand.

“The doctor gave Samantha a shot to make her sleep,” Maxie said. “He didn't want to, but the other residents bullied him into it.” Smiling, she looked at Mike with love and gratitude. “Since you bought the books and games and all the other things for this place, not to mention what you did for my room, I think these people would do anything for you. To them, you're a combination saint and superman.”

“Don't let Sammy snow you. None of this has been my idea. Until I met her I led the quintessential life of a bachelor. I spent my days figuring out how to add more money to the already horrendous amount I have and my nights cavorting with one beauty after another—none of whom I gave a damn about.”

Stroking Samantha's arm, Maxie put her hand to Sam's cheek. Maxie looked older today than she had when they'd first met her, for what Samantha had told her yesterday about Allison's murder had taken its toll on her. “And now your life is different?”

Mike moved to stand by the bed so he could smooth the hair back from Sam's forehead. “Now my life is very different. Now I feel as though it has…This is corny.”

Maxie's eyes were bright, intense. “I like corny, especially when it comes to my granddaughter.”

“Now I feel as though my life has a purpose. Does it make sense to say that I think I've been waiting for Sam? And do you know something? I think her father knew that I was waiting.”

“David,” Maxie said softly. “My beautiful son.” For a moment she looked away, her eyes misty as she thought of all she'd missed: her granddaughter's life, her son's death. And if she'd been there in 1975, it might have been her who was killed and not the mother of a young girl.

Picking up Maxie's hand from where it rested on Sam's shoulder, Mike held it. “Dave wouldn't let me meet his daughter. At the time I thought it was odd that he wanted me out of his house before she arrived, especially since he'd had me stay in her little-girl's room instead of the guest bedroom.” Mike paused for a moment because he understood that room now, understood that, for Dave, time had stopped on that cold February morning when his wife had been so brutally murdered—and as a consequence, time had been made to stop for his feisty little daughter.

“Dave chose Samantha's first husband for her,” Mike said, looking Maxie in the eye.

It took a moment for her to understand what he was trying to tell her. “And you think he chose you for Sam, too.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Yes, I do. Dave kept saying that he wanted to make up to her for what he'd done. I am ashamed to say that for a while I thought he'd molested her. Now I think he meant that he'd chosen the wrong man for her the first time. Looking back on it, I think Sam knew when she first met me that I was another arrangement made by her father, and I think that's part of the reason for her initial hostility toward me. Her father'd done a very bad job of choosing for her the first time.”

Teasingly, Maxie smiled at him. “But he didn't do such a bad job the second time?”

Mike didn't return her smile. “He almost made a very bad mistake. For the first month Samantha lived with me, I let her stay alone in her room. I don't know what would have happened if my friend Daphne hadn't pointed out that Sam was…was…” He took a breath. “I think she may have been on the verge of suicide.”

Reassuringly, Maxie squeezed his strong, young fingers. “You've made up for lost time.” Her voice brightened. “So now that you're the rescuing hero, how do you feel? Like you've done a great, selfless deed?”

At that Mike laughed so loud Samantha stirred in her sleep. “I did at first. At first I felt like a martyr. There I was helping her, saving her from herself, and the ungrateful brat wouldn't even go to bed with me to say thanks.”

Maxie laughed. “You solved that one, didn't you?”

“She solved it. She solved everything. She's made me see how lonely I've been over the last years and how bored I'd become with everything. Sam looks at life as though all of it is new and wondrous. You should see her when she goes shopping. It's the same ol' stuff but to Sam it's as though she's exploring a new planet. I guess nobody who has lived through what she has takes the good parts of life for granted.”

He caressed Samantha's cheek. “You should have seen her at the picnic with my family. She fit in with them as though she'd been born with them, and all the kids loved her. Kids don't like bad adults, they can sense them, but she and my baby sister had children all over them.”

Stepping away from the bed, Mike examined a Victorian oil painting of an impossibly idyllic landscape, but Maxie could tell that he wasn't really looking at it. “Did she tell you about the picnic?” he asked.

“Some. She seemed to have had a wonderful time.” Even if Samantha had given Maxie a minute-by-minute account of the day, Maxie wouldn't have said so, because it was obvious that Mike wanted to tell her something and she wanted to hear what he had to say.

“I was furious with my mother for planning the thing because I knew, but Sam didn't, that Sam was being tested. Did she tell you that I have an identical twin brother?”

“No.”

Looking back at Maxie, Mike grinned. “She didn't tell you because it's not important to her.” For a moment he paused. “All the things that have been important to other people about me—maybe you could say the things that define who I am—seem to mean nothing to Sam. She doesn't care about my money or that I'm one of a pair. Being a twin is great most of the time, but sometimes it feels as though you're not a unique person, that, unlike everyone else in the world, you're only half of a whole. One of the reasons I came to New York was because I was sick of living in my small town where even my own relatives constantly asked me which one I was.”

Pausing for a moment, he ran his hand over the polished top of a cherry table. “There's a saying in my family. It's a stupid, ridiculous saying and I don't know how it got started, but it goes, You marry the one who can tell the twins apart.”

When Mike didn't continue, Maxie looked at him, trying to figure out what he was saying. “Your family came here to see if Samantha could tell you from your brother? That was the test?”

“In a word, yes. About five years ago, my twin brother, Kane, called my mother from Paris and said he'd fallen madly in love with a beautiful young French woman and was going to marry her. My mother congratulated him, then got off the phone and told me to get on the Concorde and go to Paris to meet her. She never said the words, but then she didn't have to, because we both knew why I was being sent to France.”

“You were to see if your new sister-in-law could tell you from your brother.”

“Yes.”

“And could she?” Maxie asked.

“No. Kane didn't know I was coming, so I went to the address where he was staying and it turned out to be her parents' house. I knocked, but no one answered so I walked to the back garden, and there she was, as beautiful as Kane had described her. But the moment she saw me she leaped out of her chair, ran to me, threw her arms around me, and gave me an incredible kiss. By the time Kane got there, she had my shirt half off.”

“Was your brother angry to find you like that with his fiancée?”

“No, we're not like that. He knew what had happened, but he would hardly look at me, because he also knew that she had not been able to tell us apart—and she never could. Every time I was near her, she'd ask me if I was Kane or Michael.”

“What happened to her? You speak of her as though she were in the past.”

“She died in an accident, and Kane was devastated. He was crazy about her, but—”

“But what?” Maxie asked.

“My family never met her, but I think there was the feeling that she'd died because she wasn't the right one for Kane, his…his soul mate, so to speak.”

“What happened at the picnic here?”

Mike grinned at her. “Sam knew my brother wasn't me. She knew it immediately, but I don't think Kane could really believe it. All day long he kept testing her. He'd walk up behind her and put his hand on her shoulder, but Sam wouldn't so much as look at his hand—she seemed to
sense
who he was, and she'd say something like, ‘What do you want,
Kane?'
She'd say it in a rather nasty tone.”

If possible, Mike grinned wider. “I don't think she likes my brother very much.”

“What does he think of her?”

Mike thought a moment and remembered seeing his brother watching Sam with his kids, remembered seeing him looking at her at the picnic. “If I dropped dead tomorrow, I think my brother would ask her to marry him. No, I think he'd beg her to marry him.”

Mike stuck his hands in his pockets. “Kane has made me realize how lucky I am and how much I owe Sam. If she hadn't come into my life, I probably would have married someone like my last girlfriend, then drifted through life, not happy, not unhappy, but feeling vaguely unsettled.”

Reaching out, Maxie took his hand in hers. “You have answered a prayer for me. If I could have one wish, it would be to leave this world knowing that my granddaughter had someone to take care of her, someone to love her.”

“You don't have to worry about that. I love her more than I can understand. I can't remember what my life was like before I met her. I've thought about it and I can't seem to clearly remember what I used to do with my time.” He smiled. “Maybe, as I said, I was just waiting for her to come to me, waiting for fate—and David Elliot—to hand her to me.”

Looking about the room, now filled with antiques, paintings on the walls, rugs on the floor, he gestured. “All of this is her doing. You know what she does? About every ten minutes she tells me, ‘Thank you,' and every time she says it, I feel guilty. All I've done is hand over some money, which I can well afford, but she gives of herself. She gives to me, to you, to my lonely brother and his barbarian children. Even when she thought she hated me, she worried about me when my head was split open.”

“So what do you plan to do with her now?”

“First on the list is to impregnate her.”

Maxie laughed so hard her machine needle started bouncing back and forth, as though it too were laughing. “You are a wicked young man.”

“Anything like Sam's grandfather?” His voice lowered. “Anything like Michael Ransome?”

“How long have you known?”

“Since I got her clothes off of her, which, I might add, wasn't very long ago. She has the same birthmark on her shoulder that Uncle Mike had.” He gave Maxie a hard look. “Have you told her yet?”

“Yes, I told her. I told her everything she needs to know. I wish you'd take her away. Take her to that town in Colorado of yours and keep her safe.”

“We're in too deep now. Too many people think that we're hot on the trail of Half Hand's money—or whatever it is that people want from her. Sam's mother wasn't safe in Kentucky and Sam won't be safe in Colorado.”

“What are you going to do?” There was fear in Maxie's voice.

“I'm going to solve the mystery. I'm going to find out what happened that night. I'm going to find out the truth—all of it.”