The Glimpsing (9 page)

"Where did you meet this
…
Angela?"

Janice seemed to falter.
 
She remained silent.

“Where did you meet her?” Jack repeated, his suspicion rising.

“At Bedford,” Janice finally admitted.

“The mental institution?”

“Yes.
 
I know how it sounds, Jack.”

“You couldn’t possibly,” Jack said with an air of amused disbelief.
 
“This glimpsing business you’ve been telling me came from some lunatic?”

“She wasn’t a lunatic,” Janice insisted.
 
“She was gifted.”

“She was crazy, Janice!”

“She was Portia’s mother, Jack!”

Jack’s face took on amazement.
 
“Portia’s mother?”

“Yes.
 
It’s very likely that she learned—”

“No more of this,” Jack said, interrupting her.

“Jack I—”

“No—more,” he repeated sternly.
 
“I’ve heard enough fairy tales for one day.”

Janice grew silent.

He calmly walked to the dresser, retrieved the painting, and brought it back to Janice.
 
“Now would you please do me a favor and find somewhere to hang this up.”

Janice started to protest, but Jack held the painting out to her.
 
“Please.”

Janice gave a capitulating sigh,
then
took the painting.

He made his way to the end table and picked up the phone.
 
Before dialing, he looked over his shoulder at Janice.
 
“Don’t be afraid to take something down if you have to.”
 
He then dialed Gabrielle’s cell and placed the phone to his ear.
 
It rang several times before she answered.

“Yes.”

Already, Jack could detect tension in her voice.
 
She sounded as if she were ready to end the conversation before it even began.
 
“Where are you?”

“Home.
 
Where else would I be?”

“What?
 
When did you leave?”

There was a short pause.
 
“Why are you calling me, Jack?”

“Why am I calling you?
 
Why do you think I’m calling you?
 
I’m trying to figure out where you went.”

Another pause, then Gabrielle spoke harshly.
 
“Don’t play games with me, Jack.”

Janice was standing in the periphery, holding the painting up to the gallery.

“The last thing I’m in the mood for is games,” Jack said.
 
“I want to know why you left.”

“You know full well why I left!”

“What’s gotten in to you?”

“Get the hell out.”

“Excuse me?”

“That’s what you told me last night: get the hell out.
 
Remember now?”

“No, I don’t,” Jack said, stifling his temper.
 
“I’m afraid you’ll have to refresh my memory.”

“Okay.
 
If you insist on taking me through it all again.
 
You said it was over.
 
That we were over.
 
You shoved me,
then
told me to get my things and leave.”

Janice glanced over her shoulder, and when she saw that Jack was thoroughly engaged in conversation, she slyly removed one of Gabrielle’s images and replaced it with the painting of Rose.

“I never did those things to you,” Jack said.

Gabrielle began to weep.
 
“I can’t do this anymore.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You were right last night.
 
It is over.”

“No it’s not,” Jack said as if commanding it not to be true.
 
“We just need to talk.”

“I’m finished talking, Jack.”

“Meet me at Magnolia’s in one hour.”

“I will not!
 
I told you, Jack.
 
I can’t do this anymore.”

“One hour, Gabrielle.
 
I’ll explain everything.”

Gabrielle said nothing.

“Gabrielle?”

Silence.

“Gabrielle!”

More silence.
 
And then a soft click.

Jack looked at the receiver,
then
laid it back in its holder.

Janice was gazing at him.
 
“What’s wrong?
 
What happened?”

Jack did not respond immediately.
 
He merely stood there, his head bowed slightly, baffled.
 
“Gabrielle… she says I threw her out last night.”

“Did you?”

“No.
 
Of course not.
 
But… it’s funny.”

“What?”

“Rose, the first thing she told me… was that I’d sent Gabrielle home.”

Janice turned and peered at the painting.
 
“You see, Jack.”

He looked at her dumbly.

“It’s beginning.”

The room fell silent.
 
Jack brought his eyes up to Rose’s form.
 
Somewhere, deep within the quiet of the bedroom, he thought he heard a distant sound.
 
It was Rose.
 
She was laughing playfully.

She knew she should not have come, but she did so anyway.
 
Because she had to know.

Gabrielle Saltair pushed the door open and stepped out onto the hot pavement of the restaurant patio.
 
She moved slowly, absent of everything around her, with a timidity that suggested she wanted to turn around and go back home.
 
A great part of her did.

From the moment she’d decided to come to this place, a dark sense of dread had filled the air.
 
She tried to pass it off as nothing more than the blustery winds of guilt, the same winds that had blown so constantly over the last two months, but it was clearly much more.
 
It was as if coming here would mark the beginning of some strange and unalterable journey, one that would ultimately result in a truly terrible event.
 
And yet she came anyway, brushing aside those tremulous fears, because she simply had to know.

The patio was sizeable, with enough tables for perhaps one hundred guests.
 
Each was set with a white tablecloth, a neat arrangement of silverware, and cream napkins.
 
The chairs were a light wicker.
 
A short white brick wall topped with an elegant black gate sealed the area from the street outside.
 
The morning’s blistering sun, which sat like a white-hot pupil in a sea of blue, bathed the area in hard golden light.

Gabrielle proceeded forward in a dreamy haze, not noticing the relatively small number of patrons occupying the patio enclosure.
 
There was an elderly couple seemingly lost in unspeaking silence as they worked their meal; a well-dressed man consumed in his copy of the Wall Street Journal; and a pair of twenty-something lovebirds who, every few minutes, had been leaning forward to kiss one another.

Gabrielle blithely wandered to the farthest part of the patio.
 
She turned, facing the restaurant, and then took a seat beneath the massive tree there.
 
Looking out over the patio, she felt like she had just awakened from a dream.

She’d been so engrossed in thought that she could only loosely remember how she’d gotten here: hazy bits and pieces of the drive, a mental snapshot of
herself
passing through the restaurant’s main doors, the already seemingly distant memory of stepping
onto the patio.
 
Now she realized something else: the people on the patio had stopped what they were doing to stare at her.

Gabrielle believed at first that they had recognized her as the actress from a movie they’d seen (she was still trying to get used to such adoration by fans).
 
But when they failed to wave or even smile, she became confused.
 
They looked at her with faces that suggested something of disbelief.
 
She wondered if they weren’t really looking at her at all but a squirrel or a chipmunk performing some eye-catching feat near the tree.
 
She turned to see if that was the case, but was met only by the wrinkled girth of the tree’s trunk, a row of neatly trimmed bushes, and pavement covered with scores of flower petals that had fallen from the tree.
 
By the time she had turned back, everyone had resumed what they were doing.
 
Strange.

She sat there doing her best to clear her
mind,
to soak up the solemnity of the patio, but as had been the case all morning, her thoughts turned back to the previous night.
 
She simply couldn’t stop wondering how something that had been going so right could have turned out so wrong.

She had arrived at Jack’s birthday party long after it had started.
 
The gala was being held in Jack’s large and lavish banquet room.
 
It was filled with plenty of men in stylish tuxedos, women in elegant dresses, and of course, plenty of champagne bottles.
 
She’d entered, blending in to the crowd and chatting contentedly.

Her late arrival had been intentional.
 
Jack had insisted on keeping their relationship secret and doing so was part of the façade.
 
She was careful to cross paths with him only once, as he stood in the company of Dan Piper and James Dell—the former his lawyer, the latter his doctor.
 
She had kept it brief, thanking him for getting her the contract with Clique, a new magazine whose cover she was to appear on, and for such a wonderful party.
 
She had then moved on to mingle with the other guests.

It did bother her how good Jack seemed to be at this part of things, this pretending they hadn’t a fleeting care for one another.
 
Several times she had tried to catch his eye from across the room.
 
He never looked up.
 
Not even once.
 
In fact, the only time he did acknowledge her was during the opening of his gifts.
 
He had offered a slight bow, a polite thank you, and that was it.
 
No subtle glance.
 
No veiled comments.
 
Nothing.
 
He was quite the play-actor, this Jack Parke.
 
Or maybe she was missing it.
 
Maybe he wasn’t acting.
 
Because maybe he really didn’t care at all.

Toward the end of the party, however, after the liquor had no doubt dampened his discipline, the façade did fall, if only for a brief, but very welcomed moment.
 
Jack had abruptly hustled her away from a conversation, leaving two gentlemen sorely disappointed.
 
He hurried her down a long hall and into a side room.
 
There, he thanked her again for his gift, a Rolex watch and, as if in release of some pent up urge, began to kiss her passionately.
 
He then did something
very
unexpected.
 
He spent the next several minutes holding her—just holding her.
 
No kissing, no groping, just a long and
very warm embrace.
 
As he did so, he whispered that he wanted her to spend the night with him—something he’d never asked her to do before.
 
She had agreed.
 
He kissed her once more and just as they were heading back to the party, they thought they heard the sound of a woman’s heels disappearing down the hallway.
 
Someone, it seemed, had been watching them.

They’d both immediately gone to the doorway and peered down the hall, but whoever it was had already vanished.
 
 
Not knowing who it was had left her worried.
 
All evening she had been dying for Jack to pay attention to her, but his doing so might have exposed their relationship.
 
If that news somehow made its way back to Portia…
 
No, Gabrielle had told herself.
 
 
She was overreacting.
 
 
The chances of that were next to nothing.

The party had ended just after midnight.
 
She’d left amongst a small group of women, each taking their turns waving goodbye and planting parting kisses on Jack’s cheek.
 
The others had gone home but she had driven to a secluded place, parked, and waited for Jack’s call.
 
Fifteen minutes later, it came.
 
She then returned, pulling her car into one of the seven garage bays on the western side of his house.

They resumed their night, just the two of them, sharing a glass of wine in front of the fireplace and watching a movie.
 
In the middle of it, he abruptly stood, picked her up in his arms and carried her up to his bedroom.
 
There they made love for the very first time—not that they hadn’t done so before, but this was the first time it actually felt like lovemaking.
 
He’d held her firmly, looking deeply into her eyes, as if into the windows of her soul.
 
Something was happening to him; it was obvious.
 
Day by day, little by little, he was changing, opening up, showing her things she’d only dreamed of.
 
After two of the most difficult months of her life, she was starting to feel like it might all have been worth it.

But that feeling would be short-lived.

Later that night, she had awakened to find him kneeling over her in bed.
 
He was staring down at her with a vacant expression.
 
She had smiled up at him warmly, still afloat on the evening’s events.
 
But he seemed bitter in his face, so bitter in fact that she thought he might be joking with her.
 
Seeking to change his demeanor, she had raised a hand dearly to his cheek, but he rudely shoved it away.
 
That had startled her, making her quickly sit up and stare at him, confused.

“Get out,” he had said with an icy calm.

She became even more confused.
 
“Jack, what’s wrong?”

“I said get the hell out!”

She had only sat there in stony disbelief.

Finally, seemingly frustrated, he grabbed her arm, and tossed her forward.
 
She went sprawling onto the bed, almost bouncing to the floor.
 
Stunned, she looked at him over her shoulder.
 
And Jack looked back, his face full of cold cruelty.

“Get out,” he repeated.
 
“It’s over.
 
And I don’t ever want to see you again.”

She could recall how small she felt, gathering up her clothing and dragging herself down the hall and into the bathroom.
 
Her eyes had misted with tears but she wouldn’t allow herself to cry.
 
Why should she?
 
She knew who Jack Parke was when this whole thing had started.
 
She knew about his past, his dealings with women.
 
So who was she to think she’d be treated any better?
 
She’d had her moment with him, which was longer than most, and now it was over, cruelly and abruptly, like an arm being ripped from its socket.
 
He’d done the same to Portia, hadn’t he?
 
Now it was her turn.
 
Her time to bleed.

The tears did come, however.
 
After she had dressed and paused to look at the swarthy fool staring back at her in the bathroom mirror.
 
They came recklessly and without number.
 
She simply could not hold them back.
 
The sink seemed to overflow.

Afterward, she’d composed herself, dressed, and left the bathroom.
 
 
Before heading downstairs, she had stopped and glanced down the hallway, into a bedroom she would never see again.
 
To her surprise, she saw Jack sitting on the edge of the bed, looking down the hall… at her?
 
 
His body language suggested he didn’t see her at all.
 
He then turned away and peered down into the bed, almost as if staring at someone lying there.

That was odd, she had thought, but not half as odd as what she saw next.
 
It was a long, murky sleeve of red just behind him.
 
She could not be certain of what it was, perhaps a blanket or something, but for a brief instant, something about its shape made her think it was actually a dress.
 
Someone appeared to be lying in his bed.

She had thought about venturing back into the bedroom to see what it was, or perhaps who it was, but she wasn’t going to risk that.
 
Reentering the bedroom was almost certain to spark yet another round of abuse, and she’d had enough of that for one night.
 
So she proceeded down the staircase, out to the garage, and out of Jack’s life.
 
For good.

She’d sped through the darkness, heading back towards Winchester, the ceaseless blows of heartbreak hammering at her soul.
 
What a fool she’d been.
 
What an unadulterated fool!
 
To have fallen for a playboy like Jack Parke; to have so deeply bought into the fantasy of a life with him; to think he was actually falling in love with her!