The Pact (4 page)

“Sure,” Michael grinned. “But I'm most comfortable operating in a barn.” Gus took a cheese tray from Melanie's hands and set it down on the coffee table. “I'm flexible,” she said.

Michael watched Gus settle on the arm of her husband's chair. James made no move to touch her. He leaned around her toward the cheese tray. “Is this the p&tel” he asked. Gus nodded. “Homemade,” she explained. “James goes duck hunting.”

“Really?” Michael said. He took a cracker and tried the spread.

“And deer hunting and bear hunting and once, sweet-little-rabbit hunting,” Gus continued.

“As you can see,” James said, unruffled, “Gus isn't a big fan of the sport.” He looked up at Michael.

“I guess you wouldn't be, either, as a vet. But there's a real beauty to it-you're up before the rest of the world, and it's absolutely quiet, and you're putting yourself into the mind of the prey.”

“I see,” Michael said, although he didn't.

“James IS being an idiot,” Gus said one snowy afternoon when Melanie called. “He told me if I don't stop walking down Wood Hollow Road I'm going to have the baby under a telephone pole.”

“I would think you'd have more time than that.”

“Try telling him.”

“Use a different tactic,” Melanie said. “Tell him the better shape you're in before the baby is born, the easier it will be to get your old body back.”

“Who said I want my old body back?” Gus asked. “Can't I pick someone else's? Farrah Fawcett... Christie Brinkley . ..” She sighed. “You don't know how lucky you are.”

“Because I'm only five months pregnant?”

“Because you're married to Michael.”

Melanie didn't answer for a moment. She liked James Harte, with his cool New England looks, his effortless charm, the thread of Boston accent in his speech. Many of the characteristics that Melanie possessed James possessed also, but with a positive twist: She was reserved, he was level-headed; she was shy, he was introspective; she was obsessive, he was exacting.

He was also right. Gus's water broke three days later, half a mile down Wood Hollow Road, and if a passing telephone company vehicle hadn't stopped to ask if she was all right, she might very well have delivered Christopher on the edge of the street.

The dream went like this: Melanie could see Michael's back as he crouched down in a stall, his silver hair glinting with the early sunlight, his hands moving over the heaving belly of a mare that was trying to foal. And she was standing overhead somewhere-in a hayloft, maybe?-water dripping down her legs as if she'd wet herself, yelling for him although no sound came out of her mouth. That was how she knew she was going to have her baby alone.

“I'll call every hour on the hour,” Michael assured her. But Melanie knew how Michael functioned: Once he got wrapped up in a colicky horse or a ewe with mastitis, time fell away for him; most of the roads he traveled as a country vet didn't have a luxurious string of telephone booths. Her due date came and went at the end of April. Then one night, Melanie heard Michael answer the phone beside the bed. He whispered something her mind did not register, and disappeared in the dark.

She dreamed again about the barn, and woke up to find the mattress soaking wet. Pain made her double over. Michael must have left a note somewhere with a telephone number. Melanie walked through the bedroom and the bathroom, periodically stopping to sweat out contractions, but she couldn't find it. She picked up the phone and called Gus.

“Now,” she said, and Gus understood.

James was operating at the hospital, so Gus brought Chris along in his car seat. “We'll find Michael,” she assured Melanie. She placed Melanie's hand on the gearshift, telling her to squeeze when it started to hurt. At the Emergency pavilion, she parked the car. “Stay here,” she said, grabbing Chris and running through the sliding doors. “You have to help me,” she shouted to a triage nurse. “There's a woman in labor.”

The nurse blinked at her, at Chris. “Looks to me like you're too late,” she said.

“It's not me,” Gus said. “It's my friend. In the car.”

Within minutes Melanie was in a delivery room, wearing a fresh johnny and writhing in pain. The obstetrics nurse turned to Gus. “I don't suppose you know where the father is?”

“On his way,” Gus said, though this was not true. “I'm supposed to stand in for him.” The nurse looked at Melanie, who had reached out to hold Gus's hand, and at Chris, who was asleep in a plastic bassinet. “I'll take him to the nursery,” she said. “Can't have a baby in delivery.”

“I thought that was the point,” Gus muttered, and Melanie choked out a laugh.

“You didn't tell me this hurt,” Melanie said.

“Of course I did.”

“You didn't tell me,” she amended, “it hurt this much.” Melanie's doctor had also delivered Chris. “Let me guess,” she said to Gus, reaching beneath the johnny to check Melanie's cervix. “You had so much fun the first time you couldn't stay away.” She helped Melanie sit up. “Okay, Melanie,” the doctor said. “I want you to push.” So with her best friend bracing her shoulders and shouting in strident harmony, Melanie gave birth to a girl. “Oh, my,” she said, her eyes damp. “Oh, look at that.”

“I know,” Gus said, her throat tight. “I see.” And she left to find her own child. The nurse had just finished packing ice between Melanie's legs and drawing the covers up to her waist when Gus returned to the room with Chris in her arms. “Look who I ran into,” she said, holding the door so that Michael could pass through.

“I told you so,” Melanie chided, but she was already turning the baby so that Michael could see her. Michael touched his daughter's fine blond eyebrows. His fingernail was larger than her nose. “She's perfect. She's ...” He shook his head and looked up. “I don't know what to say.”

“You owe me,” Gus suggested.

“I do,” Michael said, smiling from the inside. “I'll give you anything but my firstborn.” The door of the room swung open again, and James Harte stood there in scrubs, holding aloft a bottle of champagne. “Hey!” he said, pumping Michael's hand. “Rumor has it that you've had quite a morning.” He smiled at Gus. “And I hear you're a midwife.” He popped open the Moet, apologizing as some fizzed onto Melanie's blankets, and poured the champagne into four plastic cups. “To parenthood,” he said, lifting his glass. “To. . . does she have a name?” Michael looked at his wife. “Emily,” she said.

“To Emily.”

Michael lifted his glass. “And, belatedly, to Chris.”

Melanie glanced at the baby's translucent eyelids and slack bow mouth, and reluctantly transferred her to the plastic bassinet beside the bed. Emily barely took up a third of the space.

“Do you mind?” Gus asked softly, pointing to the bassinet and then to Chris, snoring softly in her arms.

“Go right ahead.” Melanie watched Gus lay her son beside Emily.

“Look at that,” Michael said. “My daughter's an hour old and she's already sleeping with some guy.” They all looked at the bassinet. The baby startled, a reflex. Her long fingers flailed open like a morning glory and curled back into fists, grabbing for purchase. And although she was completely unaware, when Emily Gold again settled into sleep, she was holding tight to Christopher Harte's hand.

November 1997

There was very little that shocked Anne-Marie Marrone.

She would have thought that her ten years with the Washington, D.C., metropolitan police could offer more surprises than the subsequent ten years in the sleepy town of Bainbridge, New Hampshire, but she'd been mistaken. In D.C., she'd never known her perps. Somehow, domestic abuse was more unnerving when it came at the hands of the legendary, beloved Bainbridge Elementary School principal. A Mafia-run drug ring was less disturbing than a field of pot lovingly tended alongside the basil and marjoram at old Mrs. Inglenook's house. Finding a mortally wounded teenage girl, a bleeding boy, and a smoking gun might not have been a routine occurrence in Bainbridge, but that didn't mean Anne-Marie could not have seen it coming.

“I'd like to speak to Chris now,” she repeated.

“You're wrong,” Gus Harte said, folding her arms over her chest.

“Maybe your son can tell me that.” She would not offer the mother the truth: that although she didn't yet have grounds to arrest Christopher Harte as a suspect in a homicide, the case would be treated as one until proven otherwise.

“I know my rights-” Gus began, but Anne-Marie held up her hand.

“So do I, Mrs. Harte. And if you'd like, I'd be happy to read them to you and your son. But he's not under suspicion now; he'd just be helping us put together an investigation. And since he's the only living eyewitness to what happened, I can't see why you'd object to my conversation with him. Unless,” she said, “he's told you something you feel a need to hide?” Gus Harte's cheeks burned; she stepped back and let the detective enter the hospital room. ALTHOUGH THE WOMAN wasn't wearing a uniform or visibly carrying anything more threatening than a notepad, there was a self-righteous scent about her that swept into the room with her arrival, causing James to rise and sidle closer to Chris's bed. “James,” Gus said quietly, hoping that her son would sleep through it all, “Detective-Sergeant Marrone would like to speak to Chris.”

“Well,” James said, “as a doctor, I can tell you he's in no condition-” “With all due respect, Dr. Harte,” Detective Marrone said, “you aren't the attending physician. Dr. Coleman's already cleared my entry.” She sat down on the edge of the bed and rested her notepad in her lap. Gus watched this woman sit where she was supposed to be sitting and sensed a rising swell in her chest that reminded her of the way she'd felt years ago when a toddler had pushed Chris at the playground, or when Chris's fifth-grade teacher had intimated at a parent conference that he was less than perfect. The tigress, James had called her, when Gus went on the warpath to protect her child. But what, this time, was she protecting him from? “Chris,” the detective called softly. "Chris .

. . can I talk to you?“ Chris's eyes blinked open-bedroom eyes, Gus had always called them, so fathomlessly pale against his dark skin and hair. ”I'm Detective Marrone, from the Bainbridge police."

“Detective,” James said, “Chris has been through quite a trauma. I don't see what it is that can't wait.”

Chris's hands tensed on the edge of the blanket. He looked up at the detective. “Do you know what happened to Emily?”

It took a moment for Anne-Marie to decide if the boy was asking her for information, or offering his confession. “Emily,” she said, “was taken to the hospital, just like you.” She flicked the ballpoint of her pen. “What were you doing at the carousel tonight, Chris?”

“We went to ... uh, fool around.” He picked at the edge of his blanket. “We took some Canadian Club with us.”

Gus's mouth dropped open. Chris, who had done volunteer work with her for MADD, had been drinking and driving?

“Was that all you had with you?”

“No,” Chris whispered. “I sort of took my father's gun.”

“His what?” Gus exclaimed, stepping forward at the same time James began to object.

“Chris,” Detective Marrone said, not batting an eye. “I just want to know what happened tonight.” She stared at him. “I need to know your story.”

“Because Em can't give you hers, can she?” Chris said, curling forward. “She's dead?” Before Gus could approach the bed and put her arms around her son, Detective Marrone did it for her. “Yes,” she said, as Chris broke into loud sobs. His back, the only part of him Gus could see in the policewoman's embrace, spasmed with coughs.

“Did the two of you have a fight?” she asked quietly, releasing Chris. Gus recognized the exact moment that Chris realized what the detective was suggesting. Get out, she wanted to say, that feral defense spilling out of her, but she discovered that she could not speak at all. She found herself, like James, waiting for her son to object.

Wondering, for a flicker of a moment, if he would.

Chris shook his head forcefully, as if now that Marrone had planted the seed in his thoughts he needed to physically dislodge it. “Jesus Christ, no. I love her. I love Em.” He brought his knees up beneath the blanket and buried his face against them. “We were going to do it together,” he mumbled.

“Do what?”

Although Gus had not been the one to ask the question, Chris glanced up at his mother, fear stamped on his face. “Kill ourselves,” he said softly.

“Em was going to go first,” he explained, still speaking to Gus. “She . . . she shot herself. And before I got a chance to do it, too, the police came.”

Don't think about it, Gus ordered herself silently. Just act. She ran to the bed and held Chris, her mind numbed by disbelief-Emily and Chris? Committing suicide? It simply was not possible-but that only left another, more sinister alternative. The one that Detective Marrone had posed. As unthinkable as it was that Emily would kill herself, it was even more ludicrous to believe that Chris could have killed her.

Gus raised her face above Chris's broad shoulder to see the detective. “Leave,” she said. “Now.” Anne-Marie Marrone nodded. “I'll be in touch,” she said. “I'm sorry.” Gus continued to rock Chris as the detective left, wondering whether she had been apologizing for what had taken place, or for what would happen when she returned.

MICHAEL PUT MELANIE INTO BED, drifting on the Valium a sensitive ER physician had prescribed. He sat on the opposite side, waiting until he heard her breathing level off into sleep, unwilling to leave until he knew for certain that she, too, would not be taken from him unawares. Then he walked down the hall to Emily's room. The door was closed for privacy; when he opened it a rush of memories tumbled out, as if the essence of his daughter had simply been bottled up inside. Dizzy with the gift of it, Michael leaned against the doorjamb and breathed in the sweet nutty fragrance of Emily's Body Shop perfume, the waxy, ethylene odor of the drying canvas where a recent oil painting stood. He reached for a towel slung over the footboard, still damp. She was coming back; she had to be coming back; there was too much left unfinished here. At the hospital, he had spoken to the detective assigned to the case. Michael had assumed a masked assailant, a mugging, a drive-by shooting. He had been fantasizing about wrapping his hands around the throat of the stranger who'd taken his daughter's life.

He hadn't realized that person was Emily.

But Detective Marrone had spoken to Chris. She said that although any case like this-one survivor, one dead-would be treated as a homicide, Chris Harte had talked of a suicide pact. Michael had tried to remember details, conversations, events. The last discussion he'd had with Emily had been over breakfast. “Dad,” she had said, “have you seen my backpack? I can't find it anywhere.”

Was that some kind of code?

Michael walked over to the mirror hanging over Emily's dresser and saw, in the reflection, a face that looked too much like his daughter's had. He flattened his hands on the dresser, knocking over a small tub of Blistex. Inside, pressed into the translucent yellow paraffin, was the imprint of a finger. Was it her pinky? Was it one of the ones Michael had kissed when she'd been tiny and had fallen off her bike or gotten it caught in a drawer?

He rushed out of the room, quietly left the house, and drove north.

The Simpsons, whose prize Thoroughbred had almost died giving birth to a pair of fillies last week, were surprised to see him in the barn at dawn when they went to feed the horses. They hadn't called him, they said, and everything really had been fine for the past few days. But Michael waved them away, assuring them that a free follow-up visit was always included for difficult labors. He stood in the stall with his back to Joe Simpson until the man shrugged and left, and then he stroked the slender flanks of the mare, touched the spiked, downy manes of her offspring, and tried to remind himself that he'd once had the power to heal.

WHEN CHRIS WOKE UP he felt like a lemon had wedged itself right in the middle of his throat, and his eyes were so dry the lids might as well have been closing over splintered glass. He had a hell of a headache, too, but he knew that was from the fall, and the stitches. His mother was curled at the foot of the bed; his father had fallen asleep in the only chair. There was nobody else there. No nurses, no doctors. No detective.

He tried to imagine Emily, where she was now. At some funeral home? In the morgue? Where was the morgue, anyway... it was never listed on the elevator stops. He shifted uncomfortably, wincing at the thunder in his head, trying to remember the last thing Emily had said to him. His head hurt, but not nearly as much as his heart.

“Chris?” His mother's voice curled around him like smoke. She had sat up at the bottom of the bed; the blanket had etched a waffle print onto her cheek. “Honey? Are you all right?” He felt his mother's hand on his cheek, cool as a river. “Does your head hurt?” she asked. His father, at some point, had awakened. Now both his parents were flanking the bed, a pair of matched bookends, with pity and pain scribbled over their faces. Chris turned onto his side and pulled the pillow over his face. “When you get home,” his mother said, “you'll feel better.”

“I was going to rent a wood splitter this weekend,” his father added. “If the doctors say you're up to it, there's no reason you can't lend a hand.”

A wood splitter? A frigging wood splitter?

“Honey.” His mother's hands fretted over his shoulders. “It's all right to cry,” she said, repeating one of the zillion platitudes the ER psychiatrist had preached the night before. Chris showed no sign of removing the pillow. His mother grabbed the edge of it, tugging gently. The pillow tumbled off the hospital bed to reveal Chris's face, scarlet, dry-eyed, furious. “Go away,” he said, spitting each word carefully.

It was not until he heard the bell of the elevator at the end of the hall that he raised his shaking hands to his face, touching the span of his brows and the slope of his nose and the empty windows of his eyes, trying to discover who he had become.

James crumpled his paper napkin into a ball and stuffed it into the bottom of his coffee cup. “Well,” he said, glancing at his watch. “I ought to go.”

Gus looked up at him through the steam of her forgotten tea. “You what?” she asked. “Where?”

“I have an RK at nine this morning. And it's already eight-thirty.” Gus's throat worked, choking on disbelief. “You're going to operate today?” James nodded. “I can't very well cancel now.” He started to stack cups and paper plates on the cafeteria tray. “If I had thought of it last night, that would have been one thing. But I didn't.” The way he said it, Gus thought, made it sound like it was all her fault. “For God's sake,” she hissed. “Your son is suicidal, his girlfriend is dead, and the police still have possession of your gun, but you're going to pretend last night didn't happen? You can just go back to life-as-usual?” James stood up, took the first step away. “If I don't,” he said, “how can we expect Chris to?” MELANIE SAT IN A room at the funeral home, waiting for one of the Saltzman sons to walk them through the practicalities of grief. Beside her, Michael fidgeted with a tie-one of the three he owned and insisted on wearing here. Melanie herself had refused to change the clothes she had worn from last night.

“Mr. Gold,” a man said, hurrying into the room. “Mrs. Gold.” He clasped their hands in turn, holding them a moment longer than necessary. “I'm so sorry for your loss.” Michael murmured thanks; Melanie blinked at him. How could she trust this man, so imprecise with his words, to take care of the burial? To say there had been a loss was ludicrous; one lost a shoe or a set of keys. You did not suffer the death of a child and say there was a loss. There was a catastrophe. A devastation. A hell.

Jacob Saltzman slipped behind his wide desk. “I assure you that we will do everything we can to make this transition a little more peaceful for you.”

Transition, Melanie thought. Butterfly from cocoon. Not“Can you tell me where Emily is now?” Saltzman asked.

“No,” Michael said, then cleared his throat. Melanie was embarrassed for him. He sounded so nervous, so sure of making a mistake in front of this man. But what did he have to prove to Jacob Saltzman? “She was at Bain-bridge Memorial, but the . .. circumstances of the death led to an autopsy.”

“Then she's been taken down to Concord,” Saltzman said smoothly, jotting down notes on a pad. “I assume that you'll want the burial as quickly as possible, which would put us at... Monday.” Melanie knew he was counting a day for the autopsy, a day to get the body back to Bainbridge. She made a small sound in the back of her throat before she could stop herself.

“There are some items that we're going to have to discuss,” Jacob Saltzman said. “First, of course, is the coffin.” He stood up, gesturing to a connecting door in his office. “Would you step inside for a moment, so that you can consider some of the options?”

“The best,” Michael said firmly. “The top of the line.” Melanie looked at Jacob Saltzman, nodding easily. She thought of how this would be something to laugh at with Gus-the funeral business, a natural moneymaker. What grieving relative would haggle over the price of a coffin, or ask for the bargain-basement model?

“And is there already a plot?” the funeral director asked.

Michael shook his head. “Do you take care of that?”

“We take care of everything,” Saltzman said.