The Homecoming Baby (17 page)

T
HE GLORIOUS FULL MOON
had cracked.

By midnight, when Celia was on her way back to the bed and breakfast, the moon looked like a smudged mother-of-pearl button with one side broken off. The sky was cloudy, but they weren't the rain clouds Enchantment needed so desperately. They were ragged gray cobwebs. The whole thing looked like someone's dirty attic.

Or maybe it was just Celia's mood. She couldn't remember ever feeling so miserable. Just on the ten-minute drive over here, she had swung from cold fury to weak despair and back again at least a dozen times.

But damn him. How could he? How could he have done this to Trish?

How could he have done it to Celia herself?

She'd called him as soon as she got Trish off to bed. The minute he'd answered the phone, she'd known he'd already discovered that Trish had taken some of his files. She could hear it in his voice. He wasn't the same man she'd left two hours ago, the one who had been trying to laugh at their plight, their hungry desperation that kept being thwarted.

He was a colder man now. A man braced for re
criminations. A man who didn't necessarily believe himself guilty of anything, but who obviously knew that others would.

The conversation had been stilted and brief. She'd said merely that she was coming by. Would he please meet her outside so that she didn't have to wake Betty?

Small towns closed up early on weeknights, so the streets were empty as she drove. The shadow of her car moved across silent storefronts like a ghost, and her mood fell deeper still.

Finally she got to the bed and breakfast. Patrick was standing at the edge of the parking lot, his silhouette breaking up an amber circle cast by the one streetlight near enough to matter.

He waited there while she parked. She opened the door, then leaned over to gather up the items on her passenger seat, which were spilling out of the inadequate envelope she'd found for them.

Finally she walked over to where he stood, her shoes clipping on the asphalt.

“I wanted to return your things,” she said. “I'm sure you realize Trish didn't mean to take them. She was distressed. She wasn't thinking very clearly.”

She could see his face better now. But it didn't tell her anything new. He looked just as he had sounded. Cold.

Why shouldn't he? He
was
cold. He had only pretended to be otherwise in order to get close to her. She could still see his bold, black handwriting in her mind's eye.
Friendly. Should be easy.

And hadn't he pegged her exactly? How humiliating to think just how very easy she had made it!

“You know,” she said, “I think the part of all this I'll never forgive is that you used me to hurt someone I care about. You made
me
the instrument of her pain. That was—” She swallowed. “Too much.”

He looked at her, his face a mask of parts that didn't seem to move.

“We need to talk,” he said tightly. “But not here. Not in the goddamn parking lot.”

She lifted her chin. “Well, not in your goddamn bedroom, either.”

“Of course not.” He gestured toward the far end of the lot. “The gardens are back there. At least we can sit down.”

She hesitated. Even now, she didn't feel entirely sure he couldn't turn on enough charm to seduce the fury right out of her. Even now, she looked at him and some primal, mindless part of her said,
touch me.

Make me believe this isn't what it seems.

Finally, though, she nodded. She walked quickly toward the back of the lot, clutching the unwieldy envelope to her chest. She'd dressed warmly, jeans and a long-sleeved shirt and a sweater. But in spite of that, the night air was so cold a shiver was always just a ripple away.

She knew that in the daytime Betty's gardens were beautiful, deep green foliage with pink flowers and glossy white wrought-iron furniture. But tonight everything was black and gray in the dirty moonlight.

Patrick led her to an upholstered chair, and she sat
on the edge of it, the line of her back so straight it could have been drawn with a ruler. He took the bench across from her.

A moment passed during which neither of them spoke. Celia realized she was still hugging the file. She peeled it away from her chest and, leaning over, set it on the bench next to him.

“You didn't have to bring those back,” he said.

“Of course I did. Obviously they're very important to you. You've kept them twenty-five years. You've dragged them five hundred miles across the country. Surely you don't want to lose them now.”

He looked at her, his eyes shining as they caught sharp silver shards of moonlight.

“You're very angry,” he said.

“You bet I am,” she said, remembering somehow to keep her voice down. There were other guests at Morning Light. They wouldn't want to be woken up at midnight by a shrewish dispute in the garden.

“Of course I'm angry. You used me, Patrick. You lied to me.”

He started to deny it. She saw him tense and take a breath. But he set his jaw and didn't say a word. Because he knew. He knew that, though he might have been slick enough to avoid uttering any direct falsehoods, he had deliberately withheld information. He had deliberately set out to deceive.

“But if I got used, that's my own fault, I guess. I'm so naive. So
friendly
. I made it so easy for you.” She laughed and waved her hand toward the files,
which held the incriminating paper. “As you obviously knew I would.”

He glanced at the envelope, and even in the dim moonlight she could see his face grow slightly pale. He had forgotten, she thought. He had forgotten he'd doodled down his selfish musings.

But still he didn't speak. He knew, of course, that he had no defense. That there was nothing he could say. Or else he didn't want to bother. He'd come to inflict pain, and he'd been successful. Why would he need to waste his breath trying to sweet talk her now?

“I should have been smarter,” she said. “I will be, next time.”

She made her back even straighter. “It's Trish who really matters. She didn't deserve this. She's been hurt enough as it is.”

“I know,” he said. “I didn't intend for her to find those things. I know she's very loyal to Angelina, and—”

She laughed, an unhappy sound that rolled across the garden and finally disappeared somewhere in the gray distance.

“You still don't understand, do you, Patrick? You still don't know what you've done.”

“Then tell me.”

“Your investigator was good,” she said. It almost frightened her to hear the stiletto points in her voice, like blades of fury. “But he wasn't right about everything.”

Patrick didn't ask what. He obviously knew she would tell him.

“You see, Angelina Linden wasn't your mother. Her younger sister was.”

He moved, then. Just a momentary jerk, like a reflex.

“Trish?”

“Yes. Trish. A timid, insecure girl of only fifteen, whose father was nearly as nasty as yours. A girl who had been raped by her sister's drunken boyfriend. A girl who has spent thirty years atoning. Paying for her sins. Praying that her little boy was safe and happy, and that her sacrifice had been worth it.”

She felt herself beginning to cry. “Damn you for hurting her, Patrick. With all your self-absorbed documents and records and timelines of brutality and pain. Wasn't it enough that you suffered? Did she have to suffer, too?”

“Trish?” he asked again. His eyes looked a little dazed, and then he put his head in his hands. Blue-black hair spilled over gray fingers that might, she thought, be shaking.

But she refused to be moved. She reminded herself that he had exploited all of them, from beginning to end. Even the sex…that had merely been a delightful fringe benefit. Her only real value to him had been that she could provide a path to the truth, an entrée to the people who could answer his questions.

He didn't have to go that far.

He didn't have to make her love him.

“Damn you,” she said again, this time only a whisper. Her tears weren't spilling outward anymore. They
felt instead as if they were dropping into an empty place deep inside.

She stood. She needed to get away from him.

But he made a low sound, and he reached out and took hold of her wrist. His fingers weren't shaking. They were strong and hard. It must have been a trick of the moonlight.

“Wait,” he said roughly. “I want to tell you something.”

She looked down at him. “What?”

“Just that—most of the things you accuse me of are true.” His voice was grim. “I came here to hurt someone. I came here to make someone pay for everything I endured from Julian Torrance.”

She knew all this. If he had something to tell her, he'd better get on with it. She was tired. In fact, she was exhausted. She felt like the leftover skin of a person, after the living part had crawled away.

He stood and, putting both hands on her shoulders, turned her to face him. She met his gaze, which looked almost as empty as her own eyes felt.

“And yes, I used you,” he said. “From the start, I tried to charm you. I hoped you'd become my friend, my guide, my confidante. I pumped you for information, and then I exploited your connection to the Linden family. I hoped that someone—most likely Trish—might tell me where to find Angelina.” He tightened his hand on her shoulder. “My mother.”

She smiled grimly. “And all along she was right in front of you. How ironic. I'm sorry you wasted so much time looking for the wrong woman.” She
shrugged her shoulder, trying to dislodge his hand. “But I don't need you to confirm everything I already know, Patrick. Let me go.”

He released her immediately. She started to walk away.

“I don't expect you to believe me.” he said to her back, “but somehow, somewhere along the way, everything changed.”

She paused. It was stupid—she should keep walking. But she didn't. Like a remote control human being, operated by the sound of his voice, she stopped in her tracks.

“Is that so,” she said, turning. “Everything like what?”

“I found something.”

“Really. What did you find?”

“I found you.”

She closed her eyes. His voice, oh, his voice. It made its way inside her even when every possible access was stoppered and latched.

“Patrick, I don't—”

“You don't believe me. I know that. But it's true. I came here looking for revenge, but I found Enchantment, and I found you.”

He ran his hand through his hair and looked away, as if he couldn't arrange his thoughts logically if he could still see her in front of him.

“I don't understand it myself. It didn't happen right away. I can't tell you the hour, or the day, when things began to change. But gradually, without my even fully realizing it, I began to feel as if I belonged.
In this strange, dry landscape, on these twisting pine roads. In this quiet little town.”

He looked back at her. “And most of all…in your arms.”

She made a low sound, a rejecting sound. She shook her head, over and over, as if it were not safe to stop denying it.

“It's true, though,” he said. “You've taught me so much, Celia. I've watched you with mixed-up patients, jealous old boyfriends, sick old women and timid friends, and I've learned something about kindness. I've seen the joy you take in pink skies and white flowers and red rock towers, and I've learned something about happiness.”

She put her hand over her mouth. She didn't want to cry. She wished she could put her hands over her ears. She didn't want to hear this. She didn't want to believe him.

“And in your arms, I think I may have learned the first thing I've ever really known about love.”

No.
No, no, no.
She would not be beguiled again.

“What pretty sentiments,” she said, her voice acidic and strange to her own ears. “And yet, they're not very persuasive, not compared to the hideous truths I just saw in those files. And in your own words, written right next to my name.”

He reached toward her again, but she shifted, and his hand missed her arm.

“I was going to get rid of them,” he said, and she heard the urgency in his voice that said he knew he was losing her. “I had decided no one should ever
look at those documents again, not even me. That's why they were out on the desk. I had decided to destroy them.”

She let her disbelief show in her face, and in her voice.

“Then all I can say is, it's a great shame you didn't.”

 

T
RISH WAITED UNTIL THE SLOW
period, the three o'clock hour when the lunch crowd had died down, and the dinner crowd hadn't yet arrived. And then she walked into The Silver Eagle and asked the triplet at the cash register where she could find Mitch.

“He's in the kitchen,” the girl said without looking up. She was studying the Want Ads in the
Enchantment Weekly.
Trish wondered if Mitch had given her notice, or whether she was always thinking one job ahead.

Trish waited. After a second, the girl yawned broadly, folded the paper and finally gave her an appraising glance. “Oh, I know you. You're his girlfriend. He's fighting with Julio over fish sauce. Go on back if you want.”

“Maybe you could call and ask him to come out.”

The girl yawned again. “I could, but Julio will have a fit.”

Trish just looked at her, and finally the girl shrugged and picked up the phone.

“Mr. Dixon,” she said, “there's a woman out here wants to see you.” She paused. “I don't know. Brown hair. Your age.”

“Trish Linden,” Trish supplied helpfully.

“She says she's Trish Linden.” The girl listened a minute, grunted and then hung up the phone. She beamed at Trish. “He's coming.”