Time After Time (44 page)

Jack, with his widespread
connections, was the obvious choice to head up the ticket
committee; he promised, with two or three others, to come up with
the ultimate list of guests to invite. Netta, Deirdre — the current
nanny — and Liz's parents agreed to do the follow-up phone calls.
Jack's father agreed to let his name be included in the honorary
committee.

It was turning out to be a
regular family affair.

On her way to the airport,
Liz stopped by at East Gate to drop off some mailing lists she'd
had on file. Cornelius Eastman, obviously on his way out, answered
the door.

She hadn't seen him since
the day of the picnic. Did he know about her and Jack? If so, he
wasn't letting on. He greeted her in his usual formal way, then
added in a surprising, gentle pun, "Taking it on the chin
lately?"

Automatically Liz's hand
went up to the bruise on her jaw. "It seems like it," she replied
with careful good humor.

Apparently Jack hadn't
filled his father in on the previous night's events. Good. Liz had
no desire for this man's sympathy.

Jack came out of the Great
Room just then. His face lit up when he saw her, which made Liz
herself want to burst into a refrain from
The Sound of Music.

Hopeless,
she thought, amazed at herself.
I've become hopeless.

"Hey," he said in
greeting. "On your way to the airport?"

"Yes. But I wanted to drop
off this list for you to collate into your master. You may already
have one; it's from the Chamber of Commerce."

"Great. How about if I tag
along with you? No, on second thought, Susy will want you all to
herself. If I stop by after she's in bed? How about
that?"

If Jack's father had been
in the dark about them, he wasn't any longer. It didn't take a
Supreme Court Justice to decide that she and Jack had something
going.

Liz forced herself not to
look at Cornelius Eastman for his reaction. "That ... would be
nice," she said, coloring.

It crossed her mind that
Jack was showing off. Then it crossed her mind that she wasn't
exactly a trophy date. Then it crossed her mind that she didn't
have a clue what Jack was up to.

Jack's father said
blandly, "Should I leave the alarm on or off?"

Jack answered just as
blandly, "On."

Liz had a sneaky suspicion
that the question was a rich man's version of "Should I wait
up?"

Feeling once again caught
in the middle, she said quickly, "I've got to be going. Nice to see
you again, Mr. Eastman."

Cornelius narrowed his
eyes almost imperceptibly and smiled. "Please. Call me
Neal."

****

"Mommy! Mommy, Mommy,
Mommy!"

Was there a better word in
the English language? Liz felt her heart leap up in simple joy at
the sight of Susy breaking away from her grandfather's hand and
making a mad dash for her. She crouched down and opened her arms
wide for her daughter, then caught her and held her
tight.

She still smells like
Susy, clean and sweet and innocent.
My
little girl ... three days ...
three
lifetimes.

And suddenly it had never
happened.

"I love your T-shirt," Liz
said, outlining the Mickey Mouse ears on her daughter's chest. "Was
that a present from Gramma and Grampa?"

"Yes, and Grampa gave
me
— this,"
Susy
said, whipping her wrist up in front of her mother's nose. "It's
quartz!"

"A Mickey Mouse watch as
well! My goodness, Grampa," said Liz with a scolding look above her
daughter's head.

"Not only that! I got
Mickey Mouse pajamas, too!"

"We did it for the
others," said Liz's mother, cutting off her protest.

Liz rose and gave each of
her parents a quick hug, then turned her attention back to
Susy.

"What happened to your
chin, Mommy?" Susy asked with a puzzled look.

Liz was ready with her
answer. "I slipped off the ladder when I was trimming the roses. I
should have been more careful," she said gravely, turning the lie
into a lesson.

"And I got you a Mickey
Mouse hat!" said Susy, returning to her adventure. "I hope it fits.
It's way big on me. That's how I tested it. But if it doesn't fit,
we can't take it back. I don't want to go on the plane right away,"
she said with a wary look in her brown eyes.

Liz glanced up at her
father, who made up-and-down movements with his arm. "Oh, it was
bumpy, huh? Sometimes they're like that. But my goodness, after all
those rides at Disney World, I'm surprised you even
noticed!"

Liz, her mother, and Susy
fell in behind Liz's father, who was hell-bent for the luggage
carousel. "Tell me what you liked the best," Liz asked her child,
relishing the feel of the small hand in hers. "Tell me everything,
every little thing."

Susy talked nonstop, right
through the drive home, right through her bath. Tired as she was,
the child was still too wound up to sleep. Dressed in her new
Mickey Mouse pajamas, she cuddled in her mother's arms, listening
to her favorite dinosaur tape as Liz rocked her for longer than the
usual time.

Out of the blue, Susy said
in a sleepy voice, "Are you going to marry Mr. Eastman,
Mommy?"

Liz was unprepared for
that one. "No, sweetie. I only said Mr. Eastman is coming by later
to help me plan the costume party benefit."

After a moment of rocking,
Liz couldn't resist a question of her own. "Susy? What made you
think I was going to marry him?"

"Just because," Susy said
with a shrug of her small shoulders. Then she added, "Is my real
daddy ever coming back?"

"Maybe he'll come someday
for a visit," Liz said vaguely. How she hated this particular
conversation.

"I mean to
live."

"No, honey. Not to
live."

"Well ... in that case ...
I think Mr. Eastman would make a pretty good dad."

"You do, do you," Liz
murmured, rubbing her chin in her daughter's hair. "You know what?
I think you could be right."

There wasn't a doubt in
Liz's mind.

In a distressing display
of perception, Susy said, "But he probably wants baby kids, not
bigger ones, huh."

Her voice was so forlorn,
so resigned. She deserved a father so much. It broke Liz's heart to
think that the sum total of Keith's contribution to Susy's
existence was one spermatozoon.

"I think if Mr. Eastman
ever gets married," Liz said to her daughter, "he'll love all-sized
kids: babies and older ones, too. But — he hasn't asked me,
Susabella."

Big, big yawn. "But if he
did?"

"He hasn't
asked."

"If he did?"

"Hasn't."

Another yawn.
"If?"

They played the game back
and forth until Susy nodded off in her mother's arms.

Liz tucked her daughter in
bed and moved the night light so that its halo fell over her
sleeping form. It didn't seem possible to love a child as much as
she did at that moment. Liz would do anything — give up her life —
to protect Susy from harm. She would do anything; but she couldn't
manufacture a daddy out of thin air.

****

Jack came later, knocking
softly. Liz stood on her side of the door and whispered "Who is
it?" which made her feel like a bouncer at a speakeasy.

He identified himself, and
she let him in, and he wrapped his arms around her in a long,
silent embrace. "I missed you," he said simply.

"Yes. Me too."

Words were either
unnecessary or inadequate, Liz couldn't decide which. All she knew
was that when he had his arms around her, it felt as right as when
she had hers around Susy.

"All locked up?" he asked
unnecessarily as they sat down in what Liz now considered "their"
spot on the sofa.

He was freshly showered,
soapy clean and with damp hair clinging to the back of his neck.
She loved that he was trying his damnedest to present a contrast to
the filthy intruder who'd terrorized her the night
before.

She curled up against his
chest. "I think I'm going to change the lock on the back door," she
said, drawing idle circles around a button of his polo shirt. "It
bothers me that a key to my house is sitting in an evidence room
somewhere."

She shuddered to think how
stupid she'd been to announce, near an open window, where she was
hiding the spare. "I can't shake the feeling that Wragg's going to
get out, steal it, and come back."

"Change the lock, then;
get rid of the feeling. I'll change it for you."

"And, Jack?" she said,
gaining confidence from his support. "I wanted to say something
else. About last night.

There's something I can't
explain. Or — I can explain it, all right, just not to the police.
Not even to Victoria."

She told Jack how at the
height of the assault, after Wragg had nearly knocked her out — how
he suddenly jumped off her and clapped his hands over his ears and
was bent over in two from the pain. "I don't think Mace, even if it
got in his ears, would cause that reaction," she said, trying to
put a light touch on it. "It
had
to be the chime-sound."

Jack knew all about the
chime-sound by now. "But the chiming didn't hurt you at
all?"

She lifted her head from
his chest and looked at him. "Oh, not at all. Just the opposite. It
sounded like the cavalry." She laughed wryly and added, "Between
the two of you, Wragg must not have known what hit him."

There. It was out. Let him
call her crazy.

But Jack took another tack
altogether. "Don't sell yourself short, ma'am. I can't think of
many women who would've had your presence of mind. I'm not sure I
can think of any."

So that was how he was
choosing to handle the subject of Christopher Eastman: he was
choosing not to handle it at all. Well, whatever worked for him.
She could live with that.

"He was
there,
Jack. I felt
him."

Or not. The encounter on
Cliff Walk — had that really happened? She was far less sure that
Christopher had chatted with her than she was that he'd defended
her.

After a thoughtful
silence, Jack said, "I read somewhere that nearly three-quarters of
people believe in guardian angels."

"But you
don't?"

Jack rubbed her back in
reassuring circles. " 'Fraid not," he said with a sigh of
regret.

She could tell he wanted
to. Somehow, that was good enough for her. In a world where it got
harder every day to believe in anything at all, the fact that a man
of Jack's experience was actually sorry that angels did not inhabit
his realm — well, that was good enough for her.

She turned her face up to
Jack's, and they kissed, gently at first, and then more deeply. Liz
had been afraid, up until now, that the assault by Wragg might have
wrecked her responsiveness forever: how wrong she was. Despite last
night — because of last night — she wanted Jack more than ever. He
was the beacon in the foggy uncertainties of her life; he was the
deep-water harbor for her to sail home to.

He was Jack.

In utter silence they went
up the stairs, then paused at Susy's room where, with Jack watching
over her shoulder, Liz quietly eased the door the rest of the way
shut. Then they treaded softly into Liz's bedroom, and each of them
undressed, still without saying a word, and they lay down, side by
side, on Liz's mercifully unsqueaky bed.

They made love, then:
carefully; quietly; with breathtaking intensity.

And when they were
finished, Jack murmured in her ear, "I want a Susy with
you."

It was the knife she'd
dreaded, a day late.

For a long, infinitely
long moment, Liz said nothing. When her answer came out, it came in
a whisper — because she couldn't have said the words aloud even if
her daughter weren't in the next room.

"You can't have a Susy
with me."

There was another long
pause — Liz was sure, afterward, that both their hearts had stopped
beating for the length of it — and then Jack said simply, "Tell me
why."

Her "shhh" was as quiet as
a slow leak in a bicycle tire. "I can't, now," she whispered in his
ear. "Not with Susy here."

"But—"

"Shhh."

"Can we talk
downst—?"

"Shhh."

The next sound Liz heard
was a short quick exhale of defeat. Jack shook his head slowly; in
the dark she felt the thickness of his hair brush against her
temple.

"Okay," he
murmured.

He rolled off her and
swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat with his forearms
leaning on his thighs — a looming, brooding presence in the unlit
room. He stayed that way for a long time. Liz began to feel queasy:
Jack's silence was even more thundering than his speech.