Under the Skin (40 page)

“Thank you, Glory,” I whispered, pulling on the beautiful garment. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

As I came out to the porch where Phillip was checking his watch, he looked up. “Is that the one your sister …” He stared, his eyes taking in every inch of my magnificent dress. Then he smiled. “Lizabeth, you look beautiful. The dress is—”

The smile disappeared and he slapped his pocket. “Holy shit! The ring—I left it in the office. Right back.” And he vanished through the front door at a run.

I walked to the end of the porch to survey the garden below. Simple wooden benches were placed between the beds of flowers and herbs—all of which, for a mercy, were lush and beautiful, thanks to a little last-minute filling in with blooming plants. Jake and Sarah were off to the side, their banjo and fiddle filling the air with old-time mountain music. The cheerful lilt of “Under the Double Eagle” rang out accompanied by the chatter of the wedding guests as they took their places. The three dogs wound their way among them, greeting friends.

My friends—now our friends. And our family—Rosie and Laurel flanking the indomitable Aunt Dodie. She had giggled like a little girl at surprising me and had made Phillip actually blush by planting a robust kiss on his cheek. Seth, Phillip’s handsome son, was there with his fiancée Caitlin, and his sister Janie. Janie—soon to be my stepdaughter—a relationship that I hoped would blossom into friendship rather than the wary neutrality we seemed to have achieved so far.

As Miss Birdie, Dorothy, and Calven were taking their places just behind Dodie and my girls, I saw Laurel introducing the two octogenarians who seemed to take to one another right away. I found myself straining to hear that conversation but it was no use; the music and the many happy voices were all one joyful symphony of sound.

The glorious noise was suddenly stilled by a peal of barking from James. Heads turned at the crunch of gravel as the Jeep crept slowly and carefully up the road. And there, being helped out of the Jeep and ushered like royalty to a cushioned armchair by Ben and Amanda, was Glory.

Dear, dear, infinitely dear Glory. Still a little pale, still a little shaky, she was wearing the coral silk dress, its accompanying jacket draped elegantly around her shoulders.
Her right arm was in a sling covered by a brilliant Hermès silk scarf and her left arm was gesturing imperiously as she directed the placement of her chair. Glory was obviously on the mend.

Dearly beloved. All of them
.

“Are they here?” Phillip came through the front door and I turned to admire my groom.
Most dearly beloved …

“They just got here and she looks great! Talk about a grand entrance. The doctor wasn’t thrilled about releasing her so soon but you know Glory …”

“It took a while but yeah, I think I do now.” Phillip put his arm around my waist and we stood, watching the wedding guests below. “It’s strange; when I first met her, I didn’t see how she could be related to you at all, but it turns out that you two were … what’s that saying … ‘sisters under the skin’ all along.”

He glanced at his watch. “Aren’t we supposed to get on down there? Seems like they’re ready for us.”

“Almost. We start down to the garden as soon as they play ‘Haste to the Wedding.’ ”

Right on cue one tune ended and another began. “And there it is now.”

Phillip’s lips brushed my cheek then he stepped back and offered his arm. I bit my lip to hold back the tears. Happiness … such happiness as I’d never thought to know again.

My heart was so full I couldn’t speak. Even if there had been time to say all the words that were tumbling over one another, trying to be heard.
Thank you for your patience … Thank you for believing in me … Thank you for loving me even when I was unlovable
.

But all that I could manage was a husky, heartfelt “Thank you, Phillip, for everything,” as I hooked my arm through his. His dear familiar face was turned
toward me and through the shimmer of my tears I could see his reassuring smile.

He drew my arm in close to his body and we began our stately walk down to the garden. Down the rock steps to the grassy road that led to the garden steps, pacing in slow and careful unison toward the rest of our lives together.

The lively dance tune ended and the fiddle began the slow, achingly sweet “Ashokan Farewell.” I could see the little cluster of family and friends hushing one another and turning to watch as we climbed the rock steps and made our way to the flower-bedecked arbor where the judge waited.

The music stopped; the judge cleared her throat and began.

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered today …”

The sweet old words ran on, like a river flowing in its course to the sea, so inexorable, so fitting. And when it was my turn to speak my vows, it was with all my heart and my mind, my soul and my body—reason and faith reconciled at long last.

“Do you, Elizabeth …”
said the judge.

And I did.

T
he glowing computer screen, the only light in the dim gloom of the tiny, windowless office, cast a sickly green hue across the young woman’s exhausted face. She slumped back in her chair and let out a profound sigh that spoke of surrender … and relief. At last it was done: the story that had, against all her careful defenses, clawed its way into existence. The story that had haunted her for too many long years, tapping with urgent, insistent fingers on the clouded panes of her memory, the story that she had pushed away like an unwanted and unloved child. Now, at last, she had allowed it into the light, had unbound it, had let it speak.

The words crawled down the screen and she scanned them critically. Enough details had been changed; it would pass as fiction. But the heart of the unresolved matter was there. She had put down all she knew … all she remembered, after so long.

She watched as the account of that terrible time passed before her blurring eyes. As the last page came into view she paused, pulled off her reading glasses, and wiped them on her sleeve. She drew in a long, shuddering breath, fighting back unwelcome tears. It had been worth it—painful but cathartic. It had been necessary,
she told herself. And the story was powerful—her best work ever.

Rereading the last words, that desolate closing paragraph, she frowned. This was it, wasn’t it? What more was there to say? For a moment she sat frozen, paralyzed by the flood of memory and emotion that threatened to overwhelm her. Then, with sudden decision, she clicked on the
PRINT
icon. The machine stirred into action and as the white pages pattered into the tray, the young woman’s lean body began to tremble.

“Maythorn?” It was a tentative whisper. Shoving her chair back, she felt held in place, mesmerized by the growing stack of paper before her. The soft murmur of pages falling one upon another mocked her.
You think this is all but you’re not done
.

So many questions remained unanswered.
You have to keep going. This won’t be enough for her
.

The final sheet of paper inched its way out of the whirring printer.

“Mary Thorn.”

Her voice was stronger now. The name was a declaration of the buried grief and doubt of the past nineteen years.

She pulled the sheaf of paper from the tray and stood, clutching the pages to her heart. Closing her eyes, she tilted her face to the ceiling and cried out, in a voice to wake the dead:

“Mary Thorn Blackfox, I
see
you!”

Still gripping the pages, Rosemary Goodweather reached for the telephone and punched in her mother’s number.

B
loody hell!”

The three dogs raised their heads, startled by the vehemence of Elizabeth’s unexpected outburst. Their morning reverie disturbed, they looked at one another as if considering abandoning the sun-warmed porch for more peaceful surroundings. But when no further words, angry or otherwise, were forthcoming, heads sank back to outstretched paws and the three resumed their private contemplations.

Elizabeth Goodweather sat on her front porch, staring unseeing at the distant Blue Ridge Mountains that disappeared into ever-hazier rows along the eastern horizon. She was blind to the nearby wooded slopes with their first gildings of copper and gold, oblivious to the clear blue sky marked only by a pair of red-tailed hawks riding the cool autumn currents, and deaf to the birds’ shrill, descending calls. The breakfast dishes in the kitchen behind her were still unwashed; the mug of coffee she held had grown cold without being tasted. She sat motionless but her mind whirled in tumult—a congregation of seething thoughts, feelings, and desires, all unresolved.

Two days ago she had been on the verge of
 … on the verge of what, Elizabeth? Phillip asked if I was still grieving for Sam, if I would ever let someone else into
my life. And I said something really profound about being willing to take a chance. And I was … I
am
 … but then, just then … Oh, bloody hell!

But at just that exquisitely crucial moment, Rosemary had called. Her brilliant, reliable,
sensible
older daughter. Assistant professor of English at UNC–Chapel Hill and not yet thirty, Rosemary had been writing a story based on the disappearance of a childhood friend almost twenty years ago.
And in the writing, something let loose. All those years that she wouldn’t talk about Maythorn … and then Saturday … oh, god, it was awful to hear Rosie so … so
unhinged.

“Mum!” Her daughter had whispered, sounding more like the ten-year-old she had been than the self-assured academic she had become. “Mum! I have to find out what really happened to Maythorn.”

Rosemary had been all but incoherent, babbling about her lost friend, about memories that had resurfaced
 … and Maythorn’s granny and something called the Looker Stone … and what was the really weird-sounding thing? … the Booger Dance? Whatever the hell that is
.

Maythorn Mullins, the child of a neighboring family, had been Rosemary’s friend—
she’s my
best
friend, Mum
, and
she’s my blood twin! We were both born on January 11, 1976, and we both have brown eyes and we are exactly the same tall! We cut our fingers and swapped blood and now we’re blood twins!
The pair had been almost inseparable for two idyllic years. Then had come the Halloween of 1986 and with it the disappearance of Maythorn from her family’s home.

A massive search through the hollows and coves of Ridley Branch and adjoining areas had revealed nothing. Some believed that the child had run away—there were whispers of an unhappy family situation. Others
were sure that a kidnapping had been attempted and had somehow gone wrong. Still others shook their heads. They swore that the child was somewhere on the mountain—dead or alive.

But as a weary Sam had said to Elizabeth, on returning from the steep slopes and thickets of Pinnacle Mountain, “Liz, she could be hiding … or hidden … anywhere out there. There’s just no way of searching every inch of these woods.”

Wide-eyed, but remote, Rosemary had watched mutely as the futile search continued. Her responses to questions about Maythorn, from Sam and Elizabeth, as well as from the authorities, were little more than monosyllables. Tearless, she had shaken off attempts at comfort. Elizabeth could still remember the sudden stiffening resistance of her daughter’s thin body when she’d tried to gather the child up in her arms for consolation.

“Don’t, Mum,” Rosemary had said briefly, gently removing herself from the embrace and retreating to her own room. And though she had eventually returned to her usual talkative self, any mention of Maythorn was met by a blank stare or an abrupt change of subject. Soon it seemed that she had simply chosen to forget the existence of the little girl she had called her blood twin. Elizabeth and Sam, caught up in the thousand details of their new life, had gratefully accepted Rosemary’s return to normalcy. By unspoken mutual agreement, they no longer mentioned Maythorn around their older daughter.

A local man was questioned by the police and released for lack of evidence. The Mullins family drew in on itself and, after a year had gone by with no ransom demand and no sign of the child, they moved away, eager to leave behind the unhappy memories that haunted their home. Marshall County put the mysterious disappearance
away in a seldom-visited drawer and life resumed its pleasant and accustomed shape.

Rosemary’s unexpected and unsettling call on Saturday had alarmed Elizabeth deeply. All thoughts of romance and Phillip Hawkins vanished like dry leaves before an icy wind. She had listened in baffled incomprehension to her daughter’s frantic chatter till Rosemary had run down, had calmed and begun to sound more like her usual self.

“I’m sorry, Mum. I didn’t mean to spring it on you quite like this. Really, I’m fine. It’s just that I’ve been so immersed in the story and when I printed it out now—well, I felt like I had to talk to you about Maythorn. Stupid, I should have waited. Listen, Mum, I’ve got to go. I’m meeting a friend in a few minutes. I’ll call you tomorrow or the next day when I’ve made some arrangements and figured out exactly what I want to do.”

Rosie finished talking and hung up and I … I just stood there holding the phone and staring
. She had stared at Phillip Hawkins who, at the insistent ring of the telephone, had released her and tactfully moved to the cushioned nook at the end of the kitchen to busy himself with her three dogs while she answered the call. She had looked at him in bewilderment, as if she had never seen him before, as if he were a stranger who had unexpectedly materialized in her home. Granted, a stranger whose right hand was scratching behind the ears of James, the tubby little dachshund-Chihuahua mix, while his left was busy fondling Molly’s sleek head. The elegant red hound’s amber eyes gazed soulfully at Phillip as if
she
knew him very well indeed. And at his feet, shaggy Ursa lay on her broad back, offering her black furry belly to be scratched.