Virtue Falls (27 page)

“Never mind him.” Misty took his hand. “Do you like it?”

“What?” He stared at her, half-crazed with amazement, embarrassment, and mad, possessive, giddy happiness.

“My dress.” She smoothed a hand down the skirt. “It’s vintage. Old-fashioned clothing fits me well, because in those days women had curves. And so do I.”

“You look beautiful.” If he could, he would kneel at her feet.

Instead, he hoped they didn’t hit any more speed bumps, because he was tired of being airborne.

“Thank you.” She fluttered her lashes. “I didn’t know if you’d noticed.”

In deep, heartfelt sincerity, he said, “There is not one moment of the day when I forget how beautiful you are, and how lucky I am.”

Tears sprang to her eyes, and he was suddenly digging for his handkerchief.

She took it and dabbed at the corners of her eyes. “Really? Because I feel guilty. I knew you didn’t think you ought to sleep with me, and then when I got pregnant, I thought,
Oh God, he’s going to insist on marrying me and I’ll let him because my father left before I was born and that’s no way to raise a child.
But I don’t want you to be unhappy, or feel awkward. I’ll do whatever you want, live wherever you need … as long as we can be together. I love you, you know.”

She’d said it before.

This time he believed her. “I love you, too.”

*   *   *

Elizabeth couldn’t quite get up the nerve to glance at Garik.

She remembered a time when Garik had looked at her the way Charles described looking at Misty. And their wedding … their wedding had been very much like her parents’, not a grand and glorious religious ceremony, but a civil union in a courthouse in Santa Barbara. It was a beautiful spot, but the location didn’t quite make up for their bleak lack of relatives.

Margaret had come down to meet her and witness the ceremony, but the trip had proved too much for her and at the last minute, she had had to admit defeat and rest in her hotel room.

Aunt Sandy, Uncle Bill, and the cousins “just couldn’t make it.”

Elizabeth had been prosaic about the quiet ceremony; she told Garik that having each other was all that was important.

Remembering now, she blinked away tears.

That stupid sentiment had proved quite untrue.

Yet as if Garik was remembering that same thing, his hand stroked her shoulder.

The quick, gentle contact made the tears harder to subdue. She had to take a long breath before she could speak, and when she did, her voice wobbled a little. “I have a photo of your wedding.” She opened her scrapbook and found the photo taken in front of a glittering sign proclaiming them
JUST MARRIED
, and underneath, in smaller letters,
THE WHITE SHOULDERS CHAPEL.
“Mama was beautiful, but you looked handsome, too, Daddy.”

Charles stared at Elizabeth with detachment, then studied the photo and nodded. “I did look very presentable. I had such doubts about our union, but she believed in us. She believed we could make it, and she convinced me of it, too.” He gave a single, dry chuckle. “Then I met her family.”

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

As a cliffhanger, Garik thought that couldn’t be surpassed … pretty impressive for a man with Alzheimer’s. “After Elizabeth and I got married,” Garik said, “we drove up to Santa Clara so I could meet Aunt Sandy and her crew. I thought they put the diss in dysfunctional. Is that who you met?”

“Did you meet my grandparents?” Elizabeth asked, her eyes wide with curiosity.

“No, not Misty’s father. He decamped before she was born, fled like a coward into the night, and when I met Misty’s mother, I knew why. That woman…” For a mild-mannered scholar, Charles projected scorn very well. “Frankie Winston was the reason Misty took theater arts as her college major. From the moment Misty was born, Frankie decided that Misty would be her ticket to Hollywood. She put that little girl in tap, ballet, gymnastics, voice, deportment, all by the time Misty was five.”

“What about Aunt Sandy?” Elizabeth asked.

Charles looked at Elizabeth in that way he had, his head half-tilted as if he could almost remember who she was … but not quite. “Sandy was pretty enough, and she had a pleasant singing voice, but when she stood next to Misty, there was no comparison. Misty was … luminescent. Sandy never stood a chance. Not in a contest where she was pitted against Misty. And Frankie always made sure she compared the girls. Misty loved me, I know, but I also know she wanted to get away from her mother, and she saw marriage to me as a way out.”

*   *   *

As they drove to Sandy’s house in Santa Clara, Misty presented a calm front, but Charles could tell she was nervous. “Hey,” he said, “I’m meeting your family.
I’m
the one who’s supposed to be scared.”

“If you knew what you were getting into, you would be.”

That explosive, irritated gasp of words startled him. Misty was always so composed, almost placid, even when in the grips of passion. And he … hated that. Worked hard to make her crazy with desire. Sometimes he thought he succeeded, but when he caught his breath, she was always placid again.

“I’m sorry.” She was trying for placid now, and not quite succeeding. “I didn’t mean to take out my fear on you. I’ve never told you about my mother. My sister, too. But mostly my mother.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

“Stage mother in the complete sense of the word. I mean, I feel bad for my mother. When she was young, she had a lot of talent and worked to get into movies, but she never got beyond the bit parts. She got pregnant with Sandy, got married, got divorced, and tried to get into movies again…” Misty sighed, a brief, breathy gasp. “I think my sister was neglected when she was young. Sandy’s married now and expecting her third child.”

“That is great news. Our baby will have cousins!”

“Yes.” Misty smiled.

But Charles had learned she always smiled most when she was stressed. How did he know when she meant it? “Is there something wrong with your sister’s children?”

“No! Not at all. They’re just kids. The house is small, though, and Sandy works, too, so another child … I don’t think Bill and Sandy meant to have another child. It’s sort of stretching their resources.”

He nodded, trying to comprehend the morass of family Misty was describing.

“My sister tenses up when my mother is around. Everybody does, but after thirty minutes, you can tell Sandy wants to shriek at Mother, and if she gives in then Mother wins.” Misty touched his hand as it rested on the steering wheel. “You’ll see. Mother always wins.”

He smiled at her. “Your mother sounds like a challenge.”

“She’s a monster.” Misty pointed to the small bungalow tucked into a fifties pocket Santa Clara neighborhood. “There it is.”

“Do you want me to park on the street so if we have to make a quick getaway, we can?”

“Yes!” For a moment, Misty’s eyes lit up. Then the anticipation faded. “No. I can’t abandon Sandy. It wouldn’t be fair.” She nodded at the low-slung sports car in the driveway. “Mother’s here.” The two words dropped like distilled poison from Misty’s lips, and after Charles turned off the car, she sat with her hands clenched in her lap. Abruptly, she turned to him. “Promise me you’ll still love me when this is over.”

He smoothed her hair off her forehead. “I’ve got it. I understand. We’re stepping into an ugly, mean swamp of emotions. But listen to me, Misty. You’re beautiful. But more than that, you’re kind, you’re caring, you’re generous, and for some reason that I don’t understand, you love me. And I love you more than…” At the crucial moment, he realized what he was saying, how important this was. “More than…” His eloquence dried up, and he began to panic.

The dimple blinked in her cheek. “More than rocks?”

“Definitely more than rocks.”

“More than volcanoes?”

“Definitely more than volcanoes.”

“More than … earthquakes?”

He hesitated.

With a wail, she flung herself on his chest. “Not more than earthquakes?”

She was crying.

Was she crying?

Yes, she was crying.

He tilted her chin up.

No, she was laughing.

“Wretched wench,” he said, and pinched her ear. “I love you as much as any earthquake under seven-point-five on the Richter scale.”

“Oh!” She punched him in the chest. “At least an eight.”

“Seven-point-five, and I’ll throw in the aftershocks.”

She laughed again, a little too long and a little too hysterically, but when she dug out a tissue from her purse to dab at her eyes, she said, “Thank you. I feel better. Not quite so afraid.”

“She can’t hurt you.”

Misty touched his cheek sadly, as if he was a pleasant fool. “Let’s go in.”

Sandy and her husband, Bill Frisk, were middle-class American normal.

Bill was six-two and looked like an aging football player, which in fact he was. He patted his stomach and joked that he used to have a six-pack, but now it was more like a keg.

Their kids, Hope and Mary, were five and almost two.

Hope was in kindergarten; she’d already received three pink slips but she promised her mommy not to bully anyone ever again.

Mary had an ear infection and was going in next week to get tubes in her ears. In the meantime, if she wasn’t crying, she was whining.

Sandy was hugely pregnant; they were having a boy, Bill Junior.

Charles discovered all that in the first two minutes of Sandy’s overly bright chatter; she never drew a breath through all the nodding and hand-shaking and hanging of jackets.

Charles noted the rather desperate hug Misty and Sandy gave each other, and the much more gingerly hug Misty gave her mother. In fact, Misty looked like a detonation expert taking stock of a particularly deadly ticking bomb.

Frankie Winston, aka Mother, was a California beauty. Too thin, too blond, too worked-out, smiling tightly, dressed exquisitely. Her face had been lifted, and yet for all the stretched immobility of her expression, she managed to convey scorn in her glittering blue eyes. With a nod, she acknowledged Charles and dismissed him at the same time.

Turning to Sandy, she said, “Bill Junior? Wasn’t it bad enough that you named your daughters names like Hope and Mary? Do you have to saddle a boy with Bill? Do you have a thing for four-letter names?”

“I don’t have any aspirations for my children to go into show business, Mother, and plain names are more acceptable in the real world.” Sandy’s eyes glittered as hard and blue as her mother’s.

“True,” Frankie agreed. “These kids would never make it in Hollywood.”

Bill Senior thrust a glass of red wine into Charles’s hand. “Here. You’ll need this,” he muttered.

Sandy asked, “Why don’t we sit down for dinner?”

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

They sat shoulder to shoulder at a round table in the tiny dining area.

In an undertone, Misty told him, “Sandy bought a round table for the same reasons King Arthur seated his knights at a round table—to give everyone the same importance in seating.”

“Your mother likes the head of the table?” he murmured.

“Um-hm.”

Bill pulled a pan of lasagna out of the oven.

Sandy stood at the counter and tossed the salad with dressing and croutons, and handed it around, followed by a basket of sourdough garlic bread.

Frankie poured herself a big glass of wine. “Darling, you do know these overflowing pans of lasagna went out a good ten years ago?”

Sandy paused, her spatula ready to cut into the steaming, cheesy casserole.

Misty shook out her napkin. “Sandy makes the best lasagna I’ve ever tasted. Why would she change?”

Sandy plunged the spatula through the noodles with a clean, stabbing motion.

“Yes.” Frankie ran her fingers through her blond, short-cropped hair. “Of course. It is very good. But so many calories!”

Charles watched the scene unfolding before him with a sense of helplessness. Outside of a play by Tennessee Williams, he had never seen anything like Frankie. The unexpected attacks, the words chosen to cut and maim, the constant undermining … it was terrifying. It was fascinating.

But this wasn’t a Broadway play, and this woman was hurting his wife. Had hurt Misty her whole life.

He was beginning to comprehend what Misty’s life had been, why she smiled, how much of her grief and uncertainty she managed to hide—

“So!” Frankie turned on him like a striking cobra. “Misty tells me the two of you are married.”

He had never in his life made a suave, romantic gesture.

He made one now.

Prying Misty’s hand free of her death grip on the tablecloth, he carried it to his lips and kissed it. “We are. I was privileged enough to win her heart.”

“She says you’re one of her professors.” Frankie looked him over disparagingly. “Old enough to be her father. I suppose you regularly seduce your students.”

It was so absurd, he laughed, a brief burst of bright amusement. “Do I look like a man who regularly seduces women?”

Frankie’s expression went from speculative to vicious.

Misty’s hand tightened on his.