The Ashford Affair (48 page)

Frederick …

“Are you visiting family?” The cabdriver’s voice startled her back into the present.

Had she been dozing? She wasn’t old enough to drop off like that; she was only seventy-two, hardly at the dozy, rocking-chair stage.

Addie pulled herself together. “How much farther is it?”

The red roads went on and on and on.

The people at the hotel had told her it should take about an hour. Not much traffic out that way, they had said, and Addie had wondered what they had meant by that. Now she thought she understood better. There was not much of anything out here, traffic or otherwise, just endless brush and scrub and the red, red mountains that towered over it all.

The cabdriver consulted his map, spread out on the passenger seat. “We should be there any moment now. You’ve never been here before?”

“No,” Addie said, and left it at that, repressing the urge to babble nervously, to say that this was her first trip to Arizona, to make idiotic observations about the cacti. “It’s certainly an impressive landscape.”

“Hot, too,” said the cabdriver, and grinned at her in the rearview mirror. He jerked a thumb towards the window. “That’ll be the house, down there.”

“That one?” It was a silly question. There was only the one, although she had to strain to see it. It had been cunningly constructed to blend into the landscape, built of a reddish brown clay of some kind that mimicked the color of the ground. It was a long, low, rambling house, built all on one level, sprawling out in either direction, in the shadow of the cactus-studded hills. As they drove along the winding drive, Addie spotted a paddock with two horses in it, one brown, the other piebald, swishing their tails as they browsed idly among the brown grasses. There were outbuildings, too: a barn, a garage, a series of miscellaneous sheds. She caught a glimpse of the artificially blue water of a swimming pool.

The driveway brought them to a stone path, which crept its way along between round agave plants to the front door of the house.

The driver pulled the cab to a stop and killed the engine. “Do you want me to wait for you?” he asked.

She couldn’t blame him for sounding so doubtful; the house had an abandoned, Sleeping Beauty air to it, dozing in the sunshine. But there must be someone here, someone who fed the horses and kept the pool so sparkling and clear.

Someone. Not necessarily the someone she was seeking.

“Would you?” Now that she was out here, the whole project seemed absurd, foolish. She had fought the urge last night, in her wide hotel bed in Tucson, to turn around and go home. Now she wished she had. What if it was the wrong person? What if there was no one there?

Even worse, what if there was?

Addie pulled her gloves back on, snapped her purse shut, and waited as the driver came around to open her door. “I won’t be long,” she said crisply.

The heat slammed into her as she emerged from the comparative cool of the car. How did people live here? The plants around the house were all variants on the desert theme, spiky agave, cacti shaped like barrels with odd yellow flowers sticking up on top, the ocotillo with its spindly limbs, covered in thorns like something out of a fairy story. The stones of the path bit into her feet through her thin-soled shoes and the sun stung her eyes. She should have thought to bring sunglasses or a hat with something more of a brim.

There were stained-glass inserts on either side of the door, bold, primary colors in an abstract pattern. Addie pressed the bell. She could hear it chiming inside, and the slap of flat-soled shoes against a hard-tiled hall.

There was a sound of a latch being drawn, and the door opened. “Yes?”

There was a woman standing in the doorway, dressed in white linen slacks and an open-collared blouse. Her hair was silver, coiffed close to her face, highlighting the elegance of bones laid bare by age. She wore large earrings, big chunks of raw turquoise framed in silver, and a necklace of the same, filling in the open collar of her shirt.

It was like looking at an old picture, a picture faded with time, crumpled and smoothed out again, cracked and lined but still unmistakably the same image.

“Hello, Bea,” said Addie.

TWENTY-EIGHT

New York, 2000

Clemmie wasn’t quite sure how she got home, but it involved a cab.

Somehow, she got herself into and out of it without incident, although she wasn’t sure whether the bill she’d handed over for the fare was a ten or a twenty. She had other things on her mind. She kept peeling back that little flap of paper, reading again,
DOVE MOUNTAIN, 1976.

Dove Mountain. Arizona? It looked like Arizona, all reds and browns and cacti. She’d gone to Arizona to take a deposition once, on a case of alleged securities fraud. The landscape through her cab window had looked like that, like something out of an old Western movie, just one step removed from the OK Corral.

She waited until she got home to inspect the other pictures, spreading them out on her kitchen table. She had never looked at the pictures very closely before. She had assumed, if she had thought about them at all, that they were prints. They looked like it, the sort of glossy art shots decorators used to brighten up a wall. One featured a jagged mountainside, with cacti sticking out along the sides. Another showed a sprawling house, circled by those mountains, with a blue, blue sky above. The last was a cactus close-up.

She peeled off the backing on each but found only the same thing:
DOVE MOUNTAIN, 1976.

There were no names this time. Well, that made sense. There were no people in the photos. She didn’t need names. She knew that handwriting.

The phone rang. Clemmie let it go to the answering machine. 1976. She had been eleven. There was no second-guessing the dating; the style of the photo and the colors used all looked 1970s, certainly not much earlier than that. It would take an expert to determine that for sure.

“Clemmie?” Jon’s voice came through the answering machine. “Clemmie, are you there? Pick up.”

She pushed aside the picture and grabbed for the phone. “Jon?”

“Guess what?” His voice was taut with excitement. “I can’t believe it, but—I think I’ve found her. I found Bea.”

Clemmie glanced down at the pictures on the table.
DOVE MOUNTAIN, 1976.

“So have I.”

*   *   *

Jon arrived thirty minutes later, bearing a large file folder.

“That was speedy!”

“Well, you know, the subway…” He looked as though he had run the rest of the way from the subway. His hair was tousled and his cheeks were flushed. There was something rather endearingly boyish about it.

Clemmie stood aside to let him in. “Deep breaths,” she said, following her own advice. “Here, give me your coat.”

“Thanks.” Jon relinquished his jacket but not the folder. Underneath, he wore a button-down shirt that clung damply to his chest. Heat rolled off him in waves. “It’s very … cozy.”

Clemmie released the door, which swung shut a little too emphatically. She winced at the sound of metal hitting wood. “It’s a place to sleep.”

“Hmm,” said Jon, his eyes taking in the sleeping alcove, the tangle of sheets on the unmade bed, the silk pajama top in a crumpled heap on the floor. There was something sybaritic about that unmade bed, dappled with late afternoon sunlight, rumpled sheets spilling over onto the floor.

Maybe having Jon over hadn’t been the best idea after all. They should have met in a coffee shop, in a bar, someplace safe and neutral. She was still wearing the wrap dress she had worn for tea with her mother. It felt absurdly dressy for her cluttered and dusty apartment.

“I’ll be moving to London in a month anyway,” Clemmie said, dumping Jon’s coat over the back of a chair. “You know. That job I told you about. PharmaNet.”

Jon set his file folder down on her messy kitchen table, his eyes intent on her face. “So you’re really going.”

Clemmie nodded. “They want me to start on April 1. It’s a good offer. Lots of responsibility, benefits, the works.”

“In London,” said Jon.

“Why not?” said Clemmie flippantly. “There’s not much to hold me here in New York right now. No more CPM, no more Granny Addie—and can you believe my mother seems to be dating?”

He didn’t return her smile. He didn’t match her light tone. Instead, he braced both hands on her kitchen chair, and said, in a voice that sounded like it had been scratched from the very bottom of his throat, “Don’t go.”

Clemmie could feel her body go into fight-or-flight mode, every nerve on edge. She tried to keep her voice light. “Can you give me a good reason to stay?”

“Stay for me,” Jon said.

She stared at him, her hands closing convulsively on the edge of the table.

Jon smiled a crooked smile. “It sounds impossibly arrogant, doesn’t it? Don’t stay for me. Stay for this.” He reached for her, and somehow, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to go to him. He bent his head so she could feel the whisper of his words tickling her cheek, brushing against her lips. “Stay for us.”

Outside, the cab horns and the piano scales faded into nothing as he kissed her, kissed her as though they were making up for the past fifteen years, for all the kisses they hadn’t had. Clemmie could feel the linen of his shirt crisp beneath her fingers, the small hairs on the back of his neck, the brush of the stubble on his chin against her cheek. It was, she reflected hazily, the first time they had kissed while sober. No excuses, no plausible deniability, no numbing alcoholic blur, even if her head was spinning as though she’d been tossing back tequila shots.

But she’d felt like this before, hadn’t she? In Rome. When she’d thought it would be all champagne and roses and happily ever after for them.

She said, breathlessly, “What us? There hasn’t been an us.”

Jon leaned his forehead against hers. She could feel his heart beating, his breath against her cheek. “Hasn’t there?” he said quietly. “Or are you going to tell me it was all on my side?”

“Don’t be an idiot!” said Clemmie unthinkingly, and watched as his face lit. “That is—what I mean is—oh, hell.”

“I know,” he said, locking his hands around her waist, his lips against her ear. She could hear the amusement in his voice. “I know. We’ve both been idiots. We could have a contest for which of us was more idiotic. But don’t you think it’s time to wise up?”

Wise had nothing to do with it. Clemmie did her best to gather her scattered wits together. She pulled back just enough to see his face.

“About that…” Clemmie took a long, deep breath. “I know this is a weird time for you. Are you sure you’re not—I mean, that I’m not— Crap.”

“Do you really think you’re a rebound? If anyone was the rebound, it was poor Caitlin.” Jon leaned forward, framing her face in his hands. “It’s always been you. You’re the pot to my kettle.”

“Wow,” said Clemmie, with something that was almost a laugh, “you say the most romantic things.”

“Would you prefer I say that you’re as much a part of me as breathing? That I can’t imagine a world without you in it? That no matter what, no matter where I’ve been, all roads lead back to you?” There was no mockery in his voice. For once, he was dead serious. He was stripped bare, without mask or pretense. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that I love you. I have loved you. I will love you.”

His honesty humbled her. Clemmie rested her forehead against his. “Our timing sucks.”

It was an admission, and he knew it.

Jon slipped his fingers beneath her chin, tilting her face up to his. “I think timing is what you make of it. If it’s meant to work, it will. Look at your grandmother.”

Clemmie made a face. “Which one?”

Jon laughed. “Either—but I was thinking of Addie. That was the best marriage I’ve ever seen, however it started.”

Everyone always talked about how things started. There were all those cute “how we met” stories, like Granny Addie and her mouse. But what if it wasn’t the starting that counted? What if it was the things that happened in the middle? It made a less tidy story that way, but possibly a happier one.

“They got their second chance,” Clemmie said slowly.

“And they made the most of it,” said Jon. “Why shouldn’t we?”

Because she was afraid. That was what it boiled down to in the end. She was afraid of being hurt, afraid of losing the dream of what they might be for the reality of it.

Clemmie twisted away, fiddling with the sash of her dress. She moved around the side of the table, putting a safe length of faux wood veneer between them. “Speaking of which … didn’t you have something to show me?”

For a moment, he looked as though he might push the point, but he didn’t. He knew her that well.

“Yes,” he said instead. “Take a look at this. It’s a private investigator’s report. About Bea. I found it in the papers she left to Anna.” He busied himself with the file folder, turning it so she could see better, including the letterhead on the top of the first page.
Dear Mrs. Desborough,
the letter began.
Pursuant to your inquiry …

Clemmie felt a little shiver go down her spine. She’d known when she saw the writing on the pictures, but, somehow, this was more real. There it all was, in hard black and white, facts, dates, details. “Granny Addie hired him?”

Jon nodded, leafing through the pages. “Right after your grandfather died.” He looked up at her, and there was a depth of concern in his expression that made Clemmie’s chest tight. “Are you sure you want to hear this?”

“I already know.” Clemmie took a shaky breath. “Bea was still alive in 1972 and living in Arizona, in a place called Dove Mountain.”

Jon’s eyebrows hit his hairline. “Want to loan me that crystal ball? I could make a fortune on the lottery.”

“It’s not a crystal ball.” Fetching a picture at random, Clemmie handed it over to Jon. Her hand tingled where it brushed his in passing. “This was one of the pictures from Granny Addie’s bedroom. Look at the back.”

“‘Dove Mountain, 1976,’” he read. “But how did you know—”

“The handwriting,” said Clemmie. “I’d seen it before on a bunch of Bea’s old pictures. It’s a little shakier here, but still pretty much the same.”