Woman in Black (29 page)

She gave each one a turn on center stage as well by encouraging the retelling of amusing anecdotes they'd shared with her on previous occasions. Conversation never lagged. She'd taken the trouble to familiarize herself with this season's lineup at the Metropolitan Opera so she could discuss it intelligently with Eva St. Clair. With the Covingtons, she talked about the Aspen Food Festival, at which they'd be hosting a cook-off next year. She was equally adept at steering the conversation
away
from politics, religion, and any topic of which she was ignorant. When it came time to sit down to dinner, everyone was so relaxed that any self-consciousness they might have felt at wearing the wireless mikes with which they'd been fitted had long since faded. They seemed scarcely aware of the cameramen hovering at the fringes of their jolly little group, recording their every move.

The only one who wasn't able to relax was Abigail herself. All she could think about, as she passed around platters and poured wine (the catering staff was staying out of sight, so as to make it look as if she were effortlessly doing it all herself), was Phoebe's glaring absence, as achingly apparent to her as a pulled tooth despite the fact that her daughter's place setting had been removed when it had become clear that she wasn't going to show.

Underlying her fury was the fear nibbling at her that something might have happened to Phoebe. Suppose she'd been in an accident and was lying hurt by the side of the road?

By the time she brought out dessert—pumpkin crème brûlées with brandied whipped cream and homemade ginger biscuits—Abigail was exhausted from the effort of keeping her smile pasted in place. Not that anyone would have guessed. To her guests, she appeared to be having as wonderful a time as they were. Toward the end of the evening, Hoppy stood up to make a toast, his expansiveness matched by the ruddiness of his cheeks, from all the wine he'd drunk. He lifted his glass, saying heartily, “To Abigail, the queen of her domain. Long may she reign!”

But Abigail didn't feel like a queen. She felt like an imposter. They didn't know what a failure she was at what mattered most: being a wife and mother. She wasn't even a good person. Indirectly or not, she'd managed to get an innocent girl killed. Phoebe's disappearing act would seem like nothing compared to the blood on her hands, should her friends and fans ever get wind of
that
.

Even after the meal was over and the last of the coffee cups had been cleared away, the guests were reluctant to leave. When Abigail threw a party, no one ever left early. She was accustomed to people lingering, occasionally until long past midnight. When she finally closed the door on the last guest, she turned the film crew loose in the kitchen to devour what was left of the food.

“Good stuff,” mumbled Holly around a mouthful of turkey roulade with cornbread-andouille stuffing. It wasn't until she gestured toward the stack of Beta cassettes on the table beside her that Abigail realized she hadn't been talking about the food. “It's way more than we need, but we'll edit it down to a tight half hour,” she explained. “Too bad your daughter couldn't make it, though.”

“Yes, I'm sure she'll be sorry she missed it.” Abigail forced a smile. Her face
hurt
from smiling.

When the crew had finished eating and packed up their equipment, she saw them out. She was on her way back into the kitchen when she heard the sound of Kent's voice mingling with Lila's. The catering staff had packed up and left as well, and he was helping her wash up. A familiar domestic scene, one that had played out countless times before in that very spot—only then it had been Abigail sharing a private moment with Kent after their guests had gone. Now, listening to the soft sounds of their banter, Abigail felt as if she were walking in on something more intimate.

The worst of it was, they didn't even notice her. As she stood watching them from the doorway, she might have been invisible. Kent laughed at some lighthearted comment Lila had made, and Lila swatted him playfully on the arm with her dish towel. It was like a knife twisting in Abigail's heart.

Once more, with Lila, she was out in the cold.

Quickly retreating before they could spot her, she turned and fled down the hallway. Her face was hot, and she felt tears swelling behind her eyes. What she needed was some fresh air, she told herself, or she would
really
lose it. She headed for the coat closet, where she kicked off her high heels and grabbed a pair of boots, tugging them on. Snagging her parka from the hook on the inside of the door, where she'd left it when she'd come in earlier from walking the dog, she stepped out through the front door. She was making her way down the front path when she reached into the pocket for her gloves and felt the unmistakable bulge of her cell phone. She must have tucked it into her pocket earlier, then forgotten it.

She decided to try Phoebe again. This time, though, when she punched in her daughter's number, she heard its familiar ringtone—Avril Lavigne's “Sk8ter Boi”—coming from somewhere nearby as well as in her ear. She paused on the path and cocked her head. It seemed to be emanating from the direction of the garage.

Moments later, she rounded the privet hedge to find Phoebe and Neal, half hidden by the shadows of the garage overhang, locked in a passionate embrace.

Neal hadn't meant
for it to get hot and heavy so fast. It was funny because Phoebe wasn't even his type. It hadn't been until the night before, at the concert, that he'd begun seeing her in a new light. It wasn't anything she'd said or done. It was just … well, a vibe.

After they'd gotten home from the concert, they'd hung out in her room, talking and listening to music, until long after her parents had retired for the night. That was when the suspicion that had been growing in him all evening was confirmed. He discovered that she wasn't just an ordinary, overindulged teenaged girl bitching about how her life sucked. There was something dark and twisted inside her.

It was the strangest thing. One minute they were sitting on the bed, his back propped against the headboard, Phoebe lying on her side at his feet while they debated the social significance of Foo Fighters' lyrics compared to Fall Out Boy's (he considered both bands far inferior to Nirvana in its day), when suddenly she sat up, hitched up her skirt, and moved in to straddle him. The next thing he knew, her mouth was covering his and her tongue was halfway down his throat.

It was their first kiss.

Somehow, despite his growing erection, he managed to disentangle himself long enough to croak, “Whoa. What brought that on?”

“You want me to stop?” Her face inches from his, she stared into his eyes as if challenging him somehow.

“I didn't say that.”

“Okay. Then shut up and enjoy the ride.” She kissed him again, with even more conviction this time, grinding her mouth against his almost as if she were punishing him.

Neal felt excited and strangely repulsed at the same time. He knew what his buddies would say, that he was one insane motherfucker for even
thinking
of turning this down, but he couldn't help feeling … well, the tiniest bit manipulated, somehow. Yet once they got into it, he found that he couldn't stop. Phoebe was everything his previous girlfriends hadn't been: rough, hot, and nasty. A
Penthouse Forum
fantasy fuck come to life.

She'd taken off her skirt and T-shirt, and he could see that she had a pretty nice body. Too thin, but not as scrawny as it had looked swimming around in all that clothing she'd had on. Not that it mattered. He was as lost in the moment as he had been in the music at the concert (which had been surprisingly good for a bunch of over-the-hill rockers).

It wasn't until Neal rolled off her minutes later, spent, that the ramifications of what they'd just done sank in. “Fuck. We didn't use a condom.”

“Don't worry, I'm on the pill,” she assured him with the world-weary air of an older woman. “And as far as STDs go, I've only been with one other guy, and he was married.”

“Married?” Neal hadn't thought anything about Phoebe could shock him at this point, but that did. The thought of a potential case of the clap faded from his mind at this surprising bit of news.

“Don't look so shocked.” Her expression was the same oddly defiant one she'd worn earlier in the day, at the deli, but in her eyes he thought he saw something broken and vulnerable. He recognized that look because he knew that place; he was as intimate with it as he had been with Phoebe just now. “Are you going to tell me you've never been with an older woman?”

“Actually, I haven't.” He and his former girlfriend, Lauren, had joked about the fact that she was six months older than he. That was the closest he'd ever been to having sex with an older woman. “Do your parents know?” he asked as she was pulling on her T-shirt and panties.

“No, and they can't know about
us
, either.” She paused to look him hard in the eye. Spots of color stood out on her cheeks, and her dark hair was a mass of corkscrew curls. She might have been a rebel in one sense, but it was obvious she cared very much about her parents' opinion of her.

Once again Neal had the jarring sense of the pieces of this picture not matching up. She was a paradox, this Phoebe. And the feelings she evoked in him were equally conflicting. She made him uneasy, yet at the same time he found her oddly compelling. Even endearing, in a way. It was weird, because he hardly knew her, but Neal had the strangest feeling, for the first time since his father's death, of being in a place where he wasn't alone in the dark, where he
fit
.

He was so lost in thought, it was a moment before he became aware of Phoebe's asking somewhat irritably, “So, do you have a problem with that?”

Her voice carried a hint of defiance, but when he brought his gaze back to her, he could see the vulnerability in her eyes: the deep-seated glint of whatever was broken inside her. Neal regarded her for a moment, taking in the sight of her as she knelt before him on the mattress, in her flowered panties and T-shirt, like a little girl waiting to be tucked into bed—or a penitent looking for absolution—before answering, “Not in the least.”

11

Vaughn, traveling north along the Henry Hudson in his and Gillian's rented car, found himself recalling Christmases past. There had been the Christmas in Madagascar, when he and some of the other crew members had stayed up half the night drinking, serenaded by howler monkeys. And the Christmas he'd spent on a crab-fishing boat out on the Bering Sea, lashed to a boom and frozen to the bone, in danger of losing life or limb with each pitching roll of the sea. A close second in terms of holiday cheer had been the Christmas in Tanzania, where the accommodating hotel staff had gone out of their way to prepare, in place of the usual Sukuma fare, a “traditional” American feast: roast turkey tough as cowhide, a gelatinous glob of canned cranberry sauce, and some mushy cooked vegetable of uncertain origin.

A parade of memories, none too cozy, though certainly colorful. Yet, in all those years, he couldn't remember once feeling homesick. Maybe because for him, the ideal of family togetherness was just that: an ideal. Any fond memories he had of childhood were mainly due to Abigail's mother. With his parents either too distracted (or too drunk, in his mother's case) to give more than a cursory nod to the holidays, it had been Rosalie who had seen to it that the tree was properly trimmed, a wreath hung on the door, and the lights strung on the outside of the house. She'd always insisted, too, that the tree be a real one, not the artificial kind his mother said was more “practical.” And if the presents brought by Santa Claus were always just what he and Lila had wanted, it had been because Rosalie had seen to that as well.

Christmas dinner in their house had always been a royal feast that was days in the making. What little family togetherness they'd had back then had been thin stuff, held together by the glue liberally applied at every turn by their housekeeper, but on those occasions it had seemed real enough. He recalled looking around the table at the faces of his parents and sister, shining in the candlelight, the magnificent bird Rosalie had roasted glistening at the head of the table, and feeling true contentment. The feeling never lasted long, though. Like the day itself, it quickly faded into oblivion. The following morning Mother would be laid up again with one of her “headaches” and Dad rushing to get back to the office like someone desperate to escape a burning building. Now, here Vaughn was on his way to his sister's to celebrate their first Christmas together in at least fifteen years.

And possibly their last.

But Lila didn't need to know that the results of his most recent tests had been less than encouraging—it seemed that his white-cell count wasn't responding as his doctor had hoped. It would only worry her. And she had enough worries of her own.

Not that the day wouldn't be fraught in other ways. For one thing, there would be Abigail, a stone's throw away in the big house. Leaving aside the tense situation between her and Lila, he knew it would be awkward, her being so close and yet so far away, in terms of what he thought of as her “other” life. By all rights, he should feel comfortable stopping in to wish his old friend a merry Christmas. But he knew that he'd only end up feeling as if he were intruding. Not only that, the cozy domestic scene he was likely to encounter was sure to depress him. For lately he'd become aware of a shift in his feelings toward Abigail: What had started out as a trip down memory lane had veered into territory more dangerous than any he'd encountered in any of his travels.

“You're awfully quiet. Feeling okay?”

Vaughn surfaced from the eddying currents of his thoughts and looked over at Gillian. She was so petite she might have been a child at the wheel: a determined little girl, with white-blond hair sticking up in furious, pink-tipped bristles and wide green eyes in a pixie's face, with a gaze as intense as a blowtorch.