The Perfect Letter (25 page)

“Miss Merrill. Leigh. Oh, damn, don't cry now,” he said, and then he was grabbing a napkin to hand across to her. Of course—Jim was the one who'd just gotten the bad news, but it was
he
who was comforting
her
.

“Thank you,” she said. “God, I feel so stupid. I'm sorry about this. It's got nothing to do with your book, which, truly, I think is spectacular. My personal life is a huge mess, a total disaster.”

“I'm so sorry,” he said. “Maybe we should have done this another time.” He put a hand on her arm. She took several deep breaths and stopped crying.

“You're such a good person,” she said. “Here I should be apologizing to
you
. I never do this. I never cry, and this is the second time today. It's so unprofessional.”

“I don't care about all that,” he said. “We can talk to each other like human beings, can't we? Isn't that more important?”

“Yes, you're right.” She wiped her face with the napkin. “I've always been so careful to keep people at arm's length. Keeping things inside. Keeping my problems to myself.” She laughed, crumpling the wet napkin in her fist. “Guess it just spilled over.”

“It's not always good, keeping things inside. Take it from someone who knows.”

“No, you're right. I don't know why I have to be so guarded. Maybe it's because I always feel so alone. I don't have much in the way of family or friends.”

“I'd like to be your friend, if you'd let me.”

“I could use that right about now.”

“Do you think you could trust me enough to tell me what's upsetting you?”

“I can try.” She took a deep breath and said, “My boyfriend proposed to me yesterday.”

He smiled. “That's it? I thought that was a good thing.”

“It should be, but I don't think I can go through with it. And he's being named publisher of my company next week, so there's that, too. If I break up with him, I'll probably have to look for another job. I can't in good conscience sign your memoir to Jenks and Hall under these circumstances. I hope you understand—the book would be orphaned if I left the company.”

“Never mind that right now,” he said, taking her hand in both of his. “My trust is in you, not the company. If you want to wait until you find a job someplace else, then I'll wait, too.”

“You'd do that? Really?”

“Really.” He handed her another tissue. “Now tell me what happened between you and your boyfriend.”

“I don't know if anything happened. I think it's me. Maybe I mistook friendship for love. I've been alone so long, I suppose that's only natural.”

“Are you afraid of being alone?”

“I don't know. Maybe. Yes. I lost my mother when I was so young, and I never had a father, or siblings. Her life seemed so sad to me. She never had anyone. Whoever my father was, he was out of the picture before I was born. She was alone. Sure, she had me and my grandfather, but she died alone, without finding real love. I don't want that for myself.”

“There's nothing wrong with being alone. I've been alone most of my life, but it doesn't mean I will always be. Every day that I wake up and get myself out of bed brings another chance to meet the person who will change my life. Fear is a powerful force, Leigh—it keeps you from hearing your own heart.”

“So—what? You're just okay getting your heart broken over and over again?”

“Sure,” Jim said, meeting Leigh's eyes. “Better than not having one. I'd rather take a risk and end up alone than never love anybody.”

Jim's hands were warm, pressing Leigh's between them like a flower between the pages of a good book. “If there's one thing I figured out from the war, it's that you don't waste your chances. When something or someone comes along I think is worthwhile, I go for it. The fear that the other person might not feel the same way doesn't mean I regret taking that chance.”

What a strange, lovely man Jim Stephens was. Maybe he was right—maybe it was better to take a chance on love than to freeze yourself solid, hold yourself back from happiness.

She thought of what Jake had said, that if she broke up with Joseph today, he'd find someone else tomorrow. He was right, of course—a man like Joseph wouldn't be single for long, not in New York. He'd meet someone new, maybe someone who loved him the way he deserved.

She was in tears again. “What is
wrong
with me? Joseph's educated and cultured and successful, and kind. He loves me. I should love him. I do love him, just maybe not the way you're supposed to love your fiancé.”

“There's no
should
when it comes to love. The heart wants what it wants.”

“I think mine must be broken,” she said, her voice catching.

“No,” Jim said. “You're stronger than you think. You deserve to be happy. You only have to figure out where that happiness is.”

“You're such a good person, Jim Stephens. I'm glad I met you.” He touched the back of her hand with his fingertip, briefly, a suddenly intimate gesture—fatherly, or rather grandfatherly. It reminded her of being home again, on the farm at Wolf's Head. It reminded her of afternoons spent swimming in the springs, of her room at home, of being safe and whole and young. It reminded her suddenly and completely of Gene Merrill, and her eyes filled with tears.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “Is there anything I can do?”

“I'm all right, really,” she said. “It's . . . good to have a friend right now. I haven't had enough friends in my life, I'm starting to think.”

“I'll be at the conference until tomorrow,” Jim said. “If you want to talk, or grab another cup of coffee . . . Well, you know where to find me, okay?”

Leigh felt back in her pocket for the ring Joseph had given her. It was still there, waiting for her to put it on. It was her choice now. A future with Joseph wasn't one she could slide into out of fear.

“Whatever else happens, you deserve to be happy, Leigh Merrill,” he said. “Don't forget it.”

“I won't,” she said. “And thanks.”

Leigh was halfway to the cottage, thinking what she would say when she saw Joseph again, when she realized she wasn't alone: a man stepped from underneath a tree to walk beside her. “Miss me?” asked an oily voice. She turned around to find Russell Benoit walking at her side.

“Not really, no.”

“Oh, sure you have. You just didn't realize it. I see you're still keeping yourself busy,” he said, looking back at the picnic table where she'd just been sitting with Jim. “Another Leigh Merrill groupie. Where do you find these guys?”

“I have to get back. Excuse me.”

“I think you have time for me. You know what I can do to your life if you don't.”

Leigh stopped walking. His cockiness, his attitude—she hated it, she hated him. She was sick of being afraid of him, of worrying about finding him behind every corner or under every tree. She whirled on him. “I don't know what you think you found in those letters, but you can't blackmail me. I wasn't convicted of anything. I'm not scared of you.”

“I think you are,” Russell said. “You know you can still go to jail for
a crime someone else has been convicted of. You still have an awful lot to lose up there in New York. Your fiancé, for instance. Your job. Your nice cushy life.”

Leigh felt cold.

“But you can keep it all, too. All you have to do is give me the money your grandfather left. It's so close, so easy to get. It's in the First Austin Bank, just downtown. A few minutes of your time. I'll even wait here for you to come back with it. The whole lot—the full million—and you'll never hear from me again. One easy transaction.”

Leigh froze, considering her options. She could give it to him. She'd still have Joseph, her life in New York, her reputation as an editor. It wouldn't be easy, but it was possible. Other people did it all the time, managing to live without family money propping them up. It might be good for her, even.

Maybe it would be payment, finally, for what she'd done—killing a man and letting someone else take the fall for it.

But giving this man—
this
man, Russell Benoit, the con artist—her grandfather's money? The thought galled her. He'd done nothing to earn it, nothing other than get lucky finding a couple of letters.
Stick it where the sun don't shine,
Gene Merrill would have told him, and Leigh was sorely tempted to say the same. If she was losing the job and Joseph, she'd need that money. She might have to live on it for some time.

She tried to think fast. “I can't take out that much without alerting the IRS. They'll come around to find out what I'm doing with all that money. They'll suspect something.”

“Not my problem. Make something up.”

“I can't get it today anyway,” she said finally. “It takes at least twenty-four hours for a large cash withdrawal.”

“That sounds like bullshit to me,” he said. He was cleaning his fingernails, not looking at her, as if Leigh Merrill and everything about her bored him. She wished she knew something more about him,
something that she might be able to use against him.
Dammit, Jake, why didn't you finish telling me what you'd found out about the connection between your father and Russell?

But it was too late now. Jake was gone. Russell was here—and she might need to pay him off to get him out of her life. It might be worth the money to her, she was realizing, to get him to leave her alone.

“It's not bullshit. It's the truth. Large withdrawals in cash need twenty-four hours' notice. Call the bank if you like and check. You think you can just waltz in on a whim and clean out the safe? Not likely. ”

He looked up and for the first time smiled at her. He had terrible small brown teeth that looked like baked beans. “Well, then,” he said, “I suppose, since you're being so agreeable, I can give you a day to get the money together.”

“Good,” she said, relieved. “Just one thing, though. How do I know you'll really leave me alone? How do I know you won't be coming back around in two years or twenty? A million dollars doesn't go as far as it used to.”

“Cash gets you the photocopy of the letter.”

“How do I know there isn't another copy someplace?”

“You'll have to trust me.”

“You're kidding, right?”

“There are no guarantees,” he said, shrugging. “Maybe you'll just have to get used to looking over your shoulder.” And he slipped away, past a copse of oak trees and down the hill, out of sight.

He was right: there was no guarantee he wouldn't show up again somewhere down the line, and what would he want then? Five million? Ten? Where would she get the money then to pay off this worthless piece of crap, especially if she broke up with Joseph now and struck out on her own?

Maybe you'll just have to get used to looking over your shoulder.
Jesus.

The future was uncertain. Maybe he'd leave her alone, and maybe he wouldn't. There was only one thing she knew for sure: if she didn't pay him off now, she'd probably be in jail by the end of the week, not to mention on “Page Six” of the
Post
. Her reputation, her career, would be ruined. And right now her career was the only thing in her life that was going well.

Maybe she should pay him off. Maybe it would be simpler. It would be the easiest thing in the world to go back to her old life like nothing had changed. Put the ring on. Go home. For a moment she wanted nothing more in the world than to be lying in her bed in her apartment on Central Park West, doing the
New York Times
crossword with Joseph in the morning light. She could still have that life.

She took out her cell and called the bank.

C
hloe's car—a rusted-out orange Karmann Ghia older than she was—came flying down the gravel road to the vineyard in a rattle of loose parts and bitter exhaust, screeching to a stop in the parking lot in front of the main house. Chloe sprinted up the path to Leigh's front porch, where Leigh sat waiting for her in a rocking chair, nervously rocking back and forth, back and forth. It had felt like forever waiting for Chloe to get to the winery from Austin, and she needed her friend now, desperately—she couldn't keep crying to people at the conference.

But first there was something important she had to do, something she'd been putting off for way too long: she had to tell Chloe the truth.

Chloe pulled up short in front of the cottage and fixed Leigh with an expression that was half puzzlement, half irritation. “This is your big emergency?” she asked, raking her hands through her pink hair. “Sitting on the porch in a rocker like an old lady?”

The next few minutes would determine how brave Leigh felt about the other unpleasant choices she had to face. Her pulse throbbed in her ears; she gripped the arms of the rocking chair to keep from shaking.

“Chloe,” she said, “I have a favor I need to ask of you. Something important. You better sit.” She indicated another rocking chair on the porch.

“Sounds serious,” she said.

“It is.”

Chloe took her seat and looked around. “Where's Mr. Wonderful?”

“I sent him into town for supplies.”

“Supplies?”

“Lunch. I wanted us to be able to talk in private.”

“Won't he be back any minute?”

“I'm not worried. It takes Joseph a year to pick out something he likes.”

Chloe grimaced. “Okay, then. Shoot.”

“I need to ask for your help with something.”

“You know you've got it. Why so serious?”

“I need you to find Jake for me. I'm not sure where he's living, and I need to talk to him. He has some information I need.”

She chortled. “Information? That's a funny way to put it.”

“I'm serious, Chloe. He started to tell me something yesterday, something important, and then we got into another argument and he took off again. I don't know how to find him. I don't have a car, Jake doesn't have a phone. You still know a lot of people in Burnside. Your mom. Your friends. I need you to ask around town and see if you can find out where he's living and ask him to come find me. The sooner the better.”

Chloe's expression had gone from puzzled to bemused. “I don't know if the two of you should get back together. All you seem to do is
fight. At least tell me there's decent makeup sex.”

“Chloe, it's urgent. I need this. Please, please do this for me.”

“You are serious.” Chloe's expression darkened. “This isn't about a booty call. Something else is going on here.”

There was only one way for Chloe to understand the urgency of the situation. Leigh took a deep breath, blew it out slowly, and said, “Someone here is blackmailing me. He's not a conference guest; I checked. It's someone else, someone dangerous. He wants my trust fund, the money my grandfather left me.” She was talking fast now, her words thrumming. If Chloe wouldn't understand, no one would. “Apparently this person, Russell Benoit, knows Jake's dad. I need to talk to Jake about how Russell knows Ben. I need to know what Jake knows. I need to know before I can decide whether or not I should pay Russell off.”

“Back up,” said Chloe. “There's something I don't understand. Why would this Russell want to blackmail
you
?”

“He says he knows something about the day Dale Tucker died. He says he'll make it public if I don't pay him off. He'll get me sent to prison, Chloe. For real.”

Chloe was giving her the side-eye. “Send
you
to prison?” she asked. “What are you saying?”

Just days ago she'd promised to tell Chloe the truth. Now that moment had come, and she found she didn't want to do it, didn't want to admit the thing that she'd been holding in so long. What if Chloe turned her back on Leigh? What if the truth was something neither of them would ever be able to get past?

But that wasn't fair. Not Chloe. Not Chloe, of all people.

She swallowed and said, “It was me. I killed Dale Tucker. Jake went to jail to protect me.”

For once, Chloe didn't make a joke or underplay the seriousness of what Leigh said. “You couldn't have. You're not a murderer.”

Her heartbeat slowed. Her breathing evened out. She felt a little light-headed, but the chunk of concrete that had been settling in her gut for a decade suddenly seemed to dissolve, to wash away like a burst dam. Funny—once the words came out, they lost all their power to make her afraid.

Leigh was starting to realize that secrets were the thing that destroyed you, not the truth—even when the truth was unthinkable.

She took another breath and continued: “It is true. I was telling the truth that day in court when I tried to confess. I know you didn't believe me back then—no one did. But it was all me. I was the one who went and got my grandfather's gun. I heard them arguing, and I saw Dale trying to choke Jake. At first I thought I was just going to protect Jake, get Dale off him, but then Dale turned on me. I always knew Dale hated me. He hated me because I was in love with Jake and not him. You remember the stuff he used to say . . .”

Chloe nodded. She'd been the target of Dale's unwanted attention once or twice herself.

“I was scared, though that's no excuse. When he got too close to me, I pulled the trigger. Maybe I thought I was just warning him off, but . . . It doesn't matter now what I thought I was doing. He's dead.”

Chloe was still confused. “But Jake was convicted. Jake went to prison.”

“He did it to protect me. He thought he'd get off on a self-defense plea. When they found the drugs, they thought they had a motive for Jake to shoot Dale.”

Chloe looked at her shoes and then up at Leigh. “Well, that worked out for the best, didn't it?”

“Don't make jokes, Chloe. Why do you think I didn't want to come home all this time? I was so ashamed of myself. I should have told the truth much sooner than I did. I should have insisted, or something. Jake said no one could know. My grandfather never knew either. Jake
felt responsible for what happened because he was helping his father dope the horses. You know how he is. He told the sheriff it was him before I could even open my mouth.” She looked up. Chloe looked shocked: pale, shaken. “It was a mistake, Chloe. It was a huge mistake, and I can never take it back. I can't give Jake back ten years of his life.”

“Jesus, Leigh. Je-sus. No wonder you guys had a fight.”

“I promised you the truth, but now I need you, Chloe. I need you to do me a very big favor.”

Chloe breathed in and out, in and out, looking out at the horizon, away from Leigh, and for the first time Leigh felt the full weight of what she'd done, how many mistakes she'd made. She should have gone straight to the police and told them the truth that night in the barn, consequences be damned. Anything would be better than living with the awful guilt of knowing the man she'd loved had suffered for her sake, of knowing that she'd lied to everyone else in her life for so long that she hardly knew what was real and what was fiction anymore.

“Chloe . . .” she said, her voice trembling. “Chloe, I need to know what you think. What are you going to do?”

Chloe took a deep breath and looked up. “I'm going to do what I always do,” she said. “I'm going to help my friend Leigh. Because no matter what mistakes you've made, you're my best friend, and I love you.”

Leigh felt more tears stinging her vision. She'd never cried so much in her life as she had over the past two days. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you so much. You don't know what it means to me to hear you say that right now.”

They embraced, then Chloe stood back and said, “All right, enough mushy stuff. I'll find Jake even if I have to drag him here kicking and screaming.”

Leigh blew out a long, frustrated breath. “That's exactly what it might take.”

She waited nearly an hour for Joseph to come back to the cottage with wine and something small for dinner. He'd borrowed Saundra's car and taken his time, as Leigh had predicted, lingering over the local offerings of cheese and fruit and wine and fresh bread until he'd arranged the perfect stay-in dinner for the two of them. He'd chosen something small and intimate, the way he always did at home in New York, and though the local supermarket was not Zabar's, he still spread out his offerings on the table in the corner with such evident pleasure that Leigh felt her heart break a little.

“This will be nice,” he said when he was finished, his posture ramrod straight, his dark hair soft and perfectly combed even in the heat. “Just the two of us. We'll celebrate properly this time.”

He stood behind the chair where she sat with her stack of manuscripts beside her and touched her shoulders, kneading gently. She'd been reading the same page for twenty minutes, trying to think of what she was going to say to him when he came back. Now here he was, and it all flew out of her head again, replaced by determination. She'd already told the truth, the whole truth, once today. She could do it again now.

“Hey,” he said, picking up a manuscript. “See anything good in this pile?”

“A bit. Maybe one or two,” she said, her eyes never leaving the page. “A war memoir. Had coffee with the author today,” she said.

“What's he like?”

She remembered how much he reminded her of her grandfather and felt a flush of warmth toward Jim. “He's nice.”

Joseph chortled. “Nice? That's it?”

Leigh blushed. “I mean, I liked him. He's very talented. I think I'd like working with him on the book.”

“More than Millikin?”

She gave a small smile. “I'm sure he'd be easier to work with than Millikin.”

“So would anybody,” Joseph said. He put the manuscript down again. “You going to sign him up?”

Again she went through all the reasons why she couldn't, just yet. But standing in the doorway looking at Joseph, she couldn't say so, not until she was sure what she was going to do. “I'm thinking about it.”

He went back to his reading, pulling another page off the top. “Well, don't wait too long,” he said. “If we don't snap this one up, someone else will.”

It was the same thing he'd once said about her.
If I don't snap you up now, someone else will.
Fear of competition was a good motivator in business, but it didn't seem like such a good reason to get married. Leigh wasn't a business venture, something that needed to be launched before the competition moved in. She was a very flawed and confused woman who was afraid to do the thing that needed to be done.

“Hungry?” he asked, leaning down to nibble on her neck.

Leigh shrank away from him. “Now?”

“There's no time like the present.”

She couldn't imagine sex right then. She still felt awful after running into Russell—dirty, like her soul had been soiled. “I can't. I need a shower.”

“Go ahead, then. I'll wait.”

She ran the water hot, as hot as she could stand it, letting the spray sting her skin nearly raw and hide her tears even from herself. She scrubbed off the feel of Russell Benoit, the greasy sound of his voice, his cigarette smell. If Russell were dangerous, as Jake seemed to think he was, she might be risking more than jail to refuse him the
money. He knew so much about her. Who was to say what he might do out of anger, or revenge?

Then again, if she stayed with Joseph, she wouldn't need her trust fund. Joseph had his own family money; they'd never want for anything. But she couldn't marry a man she didn't love just to keep from being broke. She thought of Saundra marrying to get out of her mother's house. Marrying Joseph would be a little different, maybe, but not much.

She pulled back the curtain and toweled off, wiping the mirror so she could see her face in the steam.
You brought this on yourself,
she thought, meeting her own sad and desperate eyes.
No one is to blame but you, and no one should pay but you. It's time to stop pretending otherwise.
Maybe then, finally, she could put the past behind her and move on.

The bank had told her they'd have the cash ready to go in the morning. All she had to do was drive into town to pick it up. She wasn't sure if it was the right thing, the smart thing. At the moment it felt like the only thing.

Outside the bathroom she could hear Joseph rustling some pages, pulling the cork on the bottle of Pinot Noir he'd bought to let the wine breathe. She felt seized by a sudden determination. Telling Chloe the truth had been such a relief. Maybe it was time to do the same with Joseph. He deserved that from her, after all.