All That Lies Broken (Ashmore's Folly Book 2) (5 page)

But Laura hadn’t killed Francie. Lucy felt sure about that. Leave home without a word, shut out her family, take another’s child as her own, stay married to a man she didn’t love, maybe even – better not! – go off with her sister’s estranged husband – oh, Laura could do that, and more. But kill?

So she had to clear Laura before Diana started to come to the logical conclusion.

Then
she’d deal with Laura’s whereabouts over the weekend.

~•~

Conversations decorated the day, beads on a loosely strung necklace.

The first came early, as Laura lay in bed, loathe to rise, loathe to relinquish the warmth of the comforter he had draped over her the night before as she hovered between sleep and wakefulness.
I have to leave,
he’d whispered to her.
No, don’t get up, I’ll let myself out….
She’d remembered his lips on hers throughout the night; she’d wrapped the comforter around herself to compensate for his loss. During the night, Max had taken his place, and the heat of his purring body had made her warm and secure.

When the phone rang, Max raised his head hopefully to see if she was ready to do her duty and feed him breakfast. He’d been extraordinarily patient the day before, not making his demands known until she had gone into the kitchen to make omelets for dinner.

She reached for her cell phone and squinted at the caller ID. Her lover had programmed in his various numbers over dinner, taking over the speed dial buttons once occupied by Cam. “Morning,” she murmured lazily in her best bedroom voice, and Richard laughed, a low, masculine laugh that made her want to sink further into the featherbed.

“I wouldn’t mind hearing that every morning,” he said. “Did you sleep well?”

She couldn’t help smiling as she snuggled back into the comforter. “Oh, yes.” She’d slept soundly, the result of two fitful nights, two days of considerable walking, and a morning and afternoon of emotional peaks and valleys. “How about you?”

“Well enough. I missed you.” She heard vague traffic noises in the background. “I’ll be out of the office until early afternoon. I’m meeting a client, then I have a board meeting at Julie’s school this evening. Hold on.” A few seconds of silence. “The meeting won’t end until ten – we’re voting on a capital campaign to build a fine arts center, and it’s going to be contentious – but I could swing by for a few minutes if you’ll be up.”

“Sure.” Laura stretched out in the pale sunlight filtering in through the draperies. “I’ve got errands to run today—” a new bank account, cell phone, and credit card, at the very least— “I’m not going very far. I’ve got to do some work. That concert is coming up fast.”

She had missed this, the coordinating of schedules, the mundane recital of plans for the day. Even when she and Cam had exchanged only the bare recital of facts –
I’m working on a new code stream, don’t interrupt me unless the house is burning down
–
I’m working in the studio, just call if you need me
– there had been a comfort, a security, in meshing their schedules together, in knowing that their activities mattered to each other.

Richard must have driven under a bridge; she’d missed a few words. “—doing for the 4th? Are you going to Texas?”

Laura sat up and shoved her pillows against the headboard. “No. Meg’s going to the lake with some friends. I don’t want to be with Mark and Emma if she isn’t there.” She needed to talk to Mark about Dominic’s checks, one more thing to add to the day’s list. “How about you?”

He laughed. “Here’s where I start shamelessly imposing on you. I usually hold a get-together on July 4th
– I get rid of all my entertaining obligations for the year in one fell swoop. My partner’s wife usually shares the hostess duties with Lucy, but she’s on call for the ER, and I don’t want Lucy to do it by herself. The food’s catered, and people usually bring dessert – not a lot to do, but if you could help Lucy supervise—”

“Oh, not a problem.” Her heart picked up the pace. She wondered what role she was to play, sister-in-law, childhood friend, or significant other. Lucy would probably place her firmly in the little sister/sister-in-law slot. “I have to call Lucy today anyway. I’ll get the details from her.”

“I appreciate it.” On the surface, Richard sounded brisk, professional. The traffic noises in the background were dying down; he must be north of Richmond by now. “Listen, I’m at the site – I’ll try to email you this afternoon, and I’ll see you tonight.”

Max reasserted his dominance as she hung up, throwing himself against her in a bid for attention and food. He let her pet him for a few minutes before he made it clear that she had tried his patience long enough. He wanted food, and he wanted it
now
. She threw on her robe and followed him downstairs.

Once he buried his face in his bowl, she brewed a cup of tea and took it out to the terrace where she and Richard had talked a mere two days before.

Between that morning and this lay Monticello, and nothing would ever be the same again. She’d thought on this terrace, then, that everything had changed, but she’d not even known what that meant. She hadn’t known of the titanic shift still to come, when he had finally told her about Francie and she had finally accepted the past. When she had told him she wasn’t letting him go. When she had claimed him.

She held the cup to her lips and let the tendrils of steam from the tea steal across her face.

The world
had
changed. They had changed.
We stand together
. This was real, this was serious. This was exactly the disaster Lucy had feared.

She wondered how they were going to deal with the real world – the world of Julie and Lucy and Diana and Meg, the world where they did not exist only unto themselves. Their weekend out of time had run out of time; they were back in their everyday lives. They had to make room for each other; the people they loved had to make room for them together.

She had no idea how they were going to pull it off.

She heard her cell ringing in the kitchen.

~•~

“Morning, love,” said Terry. “Are you up yet?”

Laura carried the phone back out to the terrace. Even with no one around to see, she couldn’t help but smile. “Halfway. You?”

“Rushed.” It must be noon in London; the restaurant would be filling up. His chef’s table was always booked for luncheon. “Listen, darling, you didn’t answer emails – wild weekend, eh? – so I thought I’d call and let you know I got your – um, package on a BA flight to Dulles. The airline is supposed to get it to you late today through a courier service. I gave them your number so you’d be home for delivery. I hope this man of yours is worth it – you will pass out at the price.”

“Oh, Terry, you are wonderful!” She didn’t care how much it cost. “How much do I owe you?”

“Three hundred pounds. I put it on my Visa.”

“I’ll FedEx you a check today on my London account. Terry, thank you, thank you,
thank you
.”

“Well, we can’t have you getting yourself in the club. Now,” said Terry, “suppose you tell all in thirty seconds or less, because I cannot neglect the
coq au brochette
much longer? Roger and I are heartbroken, of course. Who is this bloke?”

Laura took a sip of her cooling tea and said, “It’s complicated. I’ve known him most of my life.”

“Not the love of your life, is it? The heartless cad? The cold-hearted scoundrel?”

She heard the genuine concern in his voice, and it touched her. In all the years of her exile, she hadn’t made friends as dear and caring as these two men in London. “Well – I won’t lie to you, it’s him, but – oh, Terry, he’s not heartless or cold-hearted. He’s a fine person – a good man.”

“Does he know about Meg?”

A frisson of unease went down her spine. “No, not yet.”

“Going to tell him?” Terry knew her too well, knew what a coward she was.

She said slowly, “I don’t know. Not yet. Things are – early. Fragile.”

“Be careful,” Terry warned her, and then she heard him shout, “Be careful!
Braise
, not massacre!” His voice became normal again. “You need to think this through, hon. Men can be weird – their first instinct may be to run a mile, but, by God, don’t deprive them of their rights. And this is now – what? Fourteen years after the fact? Have a
real
good reason why you didn’t tell him before this.”

It wasn’t my secret to tell.
“I know. As I said – it’s complicated.”

“If you need to rehearse, call. You can practice your explanation on us.” She heard the smile in his voice. “I hope he’s worthy of you. At least, I hope like hell he is hounding you for sex.”

Trust Terry to leave her laughing. “I’m not saying anything. Draw your own conclusions.”

“Oh, darling girl, I am, I am, and I want you to have a
very
good time.”

~•~

Terry was right. Lying against Richard in bed, drowsily watching a PBS documentary, Laura had realized that she was running out of time. She was part of this man’s life. Her journey home was no longer a drop-in visit; she had set down roots in her family. She couldn’t keep Meg hidden in Texas indefinitely. Sooner or later, she had to introduce her daughter to Richard, to Lucy, even – God forbid – to Diana. She had to run the risk that someone might wonder how an auburn-haired mother and a Viking father had come up with a Black Irish minx.

No one in the St. Bride family had ever questioned Cam’s paternity. His parents had accepted Meg immediately, Kate with a regally raised eyebrow at the date of Meg’s birth, Matthew with a sharp comment to Cam about the usefulness of birth control. Even so, they’d adored their granddaughter. Mark and Emma had welcomed Meg, even as they kept Laura at arms’ length. If the St. Brides, who’d had every right to look askance at a daughter-in-law with a dubious background and a grandchild who looked nothing like their son, had accepted them readily, then why shouldn’t her own family? How could Lucy and Richard know that Meg looked like no one in the St. Bride family?

Laura crossed her arms on the table and buried her face.

Meg’s obvious Irish heritage wasn’t a problem. Dominic and Renée had both been Irish-American, so she could explain away Meg’s looks, if someone – Lucy – decided to ask. But, no matter what, there was no convincing explanation for Meg’s birth date unless she asked Meg to lie about her age, and
that
she wasn’t going to do.

Eventually, Laura thought morosely, she’d have to tell Richard that, in a “handful” of sexual encounters, he had fathered a child. She’d have to admit that she’d known all along that he was Meg’s father and had colluded to make sure that he would never find out and could never make a claim even if he did.
Then
he’d know that she had told him she loved him, promised to chase off any woman who dared look at him, made love with him six times in two days – all the while deceiving him about his only blood child and intending to go right on doing so until she got caught.

So much for honesty and openness. So much for standing together.

“Oh, God,” she heard herself say, and it truly did sound like a prayer, “what am I going to do?”

Get up and get going seemed like the best place to start. Richard wasn’t going to find out today; she had some time to come up with a strategy. She picked up her cold tea and started back to the house.

Near the steps, she felt something small and hard beneath her foot. She bent down and picked up a black square. She turned it over in her hand, mystified. It looked like the memory chip from her digital recorder, but hers didn’t use such a large capacity – 512 MB. She tried to remember. Had she brought her recorder out on the terrace?

It probably belonged to Richard. She’d seen him use device after device over the weekend; maybe he had dropped it on Saturday morning. She’d ask him that evening.

Laura stuck the chip in the pocket of her bathrobe and went inside to disentangle herself from the St. Bride web.

~•~

Independence took less time than Laura had expected. A quick call gave her a separate American Express account, and the satellite phone carrier immediately transferred her number and Meg’s into a new account so that they didn’t have to change phone numbers. It took five minutes to set up an Internet account and another five to send a mass email to her address book with her new email address. When she called her bank to set up a new account, her bank manager told her to change her password on her existing account and opt for online bill payment and statement reconciliation if she wanted to preserve her privacy.

“The only problem is,” Laura said, “I spend a lot of time in Europe traveling. I have to figure out a way to get the bills so that I’ll know when to pay them.”

“You can set your bills for Internet delivery,” he told her. “Just go on our web site and follow the directions so we can get your bills for you. Then you can have us pay them automatically before they’re due. People who travel a lot use the service and are very pleased with it.”