John Saul - Faces of Fear

“Be careful not to tug,” he warned Danielle as he smoothed putty around the cotton-stuffed eye socket.

She nodded silently and continued working as efficiently and expertly as Conrad himself, laying the flowing waves of hair around Margot’s head so they would neither be soiled by his work nor be in his way. Only when the face was finished would she finally lay the hair over Margot’s shoulders.

Two hours later the reconstruction was finished. Conrad stood back, regarding his work with the detachment of the complete professional. The face looked smooth and blank, like a freshly fired ceramic doll’s head.

Danielle opened her cosmetics case and laid everything out on a tray. “Go get a cup of coffee or something, Conrad,” she said, looking up at the big clock on the wall. “Or lie down for a while. You’re exhausted.”

“Not until she’s perfect,” he replied.

With an expertise in her own field that was equal to Conrad’s in his, Danielle began applying makeup to the colorless putty from which he had rebuilt Margot’s face, and as Conrad watched, his wife slowly began to emerge from the blank, expressionless facade he had created.

He could no longer pretend that this was just another head, just another face.

This was Margot, the love of his life, dead and lying on a slab.

“Conrad?”

He tore his eyes away from his beautiful wife and looked up at Danielle. Perspiration dotted her forehead.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes,” he said, his eyes drifting back to Margot’s face.

“We need to dress her.”

Conrad stripped the plastic off Margot’s favorite dress, a burgundy Versace. He had also brought black lace Oscar de la Renta lingerie; Margot would be as perfectly dressed in death as she had always been in life.

As Danielle carefully peeled away the sheet that covered Margot’s body, Alston Bedwell, the funeral director, pushed the mahogany coffin through a set of big doors and into the cool preparation room where they had been working.

Conrad pulled the sheet back up to cover his wife’s nakedness as Bedwell wheeled the coffin next to the table where she lay. The funeral director stopped short when he caught sight of the classic beauty of Margot Dunn, lying in graceful repose as if ready for a photo shoot.

“Oh, my,” he said. “You’ve done an extraordinary job. She looks…” He paused, searching for the right word, but only one would do. “She looks alive,” he finished.

Conrad’s gaze shifted from Margot to Bedwell. “For me, she’ll always be alive,” he said softly.

The funeral directer stepped forward and laid a professionally gentle hand on the grieving man’s shoulder. “We need to take her upstairs now.”

“Conrad?” Danielle said.

Reluctantly, Conrad drew the sheet back, and the three of them began to dress Margot Dunn.

Twenty minutes later they were finished and Margot looked utterly flawless.

Danielle flicked her blush brush over Margot’s décolletage one last time and smiled gently at Conrad. “She’s ready to meet her guests.”

Conrad’s heart ached as he gazed at the face of the woman he had vowed to love until death. But it wasn’t long enough — he would love her far beyond something so fleeting as death. “You see?” he whispered to her. “I’ve made you perfect again. You should have trusted me. You should have waited for me.”

But she hadn’t waited, and now he had to figure out what to do with the rest of his life.

RISA SHAW PULLED a simple black crepe dress from the back of her closet and carefully examined it for spots or other flaws. “I guess I should have sent this to the cleaner’s after the party at the Wilmingtons’,” she muttered ruefully, more to herself than to Alison, who idly sprawled on her mother’s bed.

“It looks okay from here,” Alison said.

Risa picked a bit of lint from the hem and turned it around. “Well, it’s going to have to do.” She held it up and looked at herself in the full-length mirror. “It’ll pass,” she decided, rehung the dress on the hanger, and started rummaging through her lingerie drawer. “What are you doing this afternoon?”

Alison hesitated. “Dad’s picking me up,” she said. “We’re just gonna hang out.”

Risa froze as cold fury rose inside her, but she bit back the angry words that came to her lips. Though the wound Michael had inflicted on her still oozed bitter anger, she had decided that no matter how she felt, she wouldn’t let her anger or her pain drive a wedge between Alison and her father. What had happened was between them, and Alison had no part in it at all.

She found the bra and panties she was looking for but kept rummaging anyway, buying time while deciding how to respond to her daughter. Alison had a perfect right to spend time with her father. She wasn’t about to deny that, and she certainly wasn’t going to be jealous about it. Be casual, she told herself. Don’t say anything you’ll wish you hadn’t. “Going to a movie?” she finally ventured, struggling to sound as if nothing was wrong.

“I’m not sure…” Alison said in a tone that told Risa she was sure, and whatever they were doing, they wouldn’t be going to a movie.

Risa turned and looked straight at her daughter. “You’re going to his place?”

The stricken look on Alison’s face gave it away so quickly it was almost comical. Alison had never been able to lie, and obviously still couldn’t. “I didn’t want you to feel bad,” she said, her voice quavering and her eyes glistening with tears. “Dad — well, Dad wants me to meet Scott.”

Scott. So there it was. Every instinct in Risa wanted to scream at her daughter, to demand that she refuse to be a party to Michael’s betrayal of her. But even as the words rose in Risa’s throat, she pushed them away, reminding herself once more what she already knew to be true: that Michael hadn’t betrayed her at all. Falling in love with another woman would have been a betrayal. But it hadn’t been another woman. It was something Michael had been struggling with for years, and she knew, in her heart, that it was something he could in the end do nothing about. Indeed, if he’d told her he was gay before they’d married, they would still have been friends.

Good friends.

And she’d believed him when he said he hadn’t known he was gay all those years ago.

She’d seen the genuine torment in his eyes when he told her the other night what had been going on. It wasn’t torment for having been caught, but at the pain the truth was causing her.

The pain she was still feeling.

Now, as she saw the pain her daughter was suffering just at the thought of hurting one parent by seeing the other, Risa decided that she and Michael had borne enough pain for all of them, and that whatever happened, she wasn’t going to put any of hers onto Alison. Not onto Alison, and not onto Michael either. “Of course he wants you to meet Scott,” she said. “He wants to share his life with you, and he always will.” A tiny tear dropped off Alison’s lower lid and landed on her cheek. Risa sat on the edge of the bed and wiped it away. “He loves you, honey. Nothing will ever change that. Nothing.”

Alison nodded and brushed tears from her eyes with both hands. “So you won’t be mad at me?”

Risa thought quickly, wondering how many hurdles she could make it over in one day. The one she’d just jumped had seemed far too high a few moments ago, but she’d made it. And felt exhausted.

She slipped her arm around Alison’s shoulders. “Honey, I’m going to ask you for a huge favor.”

Alison tensed. “What kind of favor?”

“I’m wondering if it would be too much to ask you to let me meet Scott first. That way, I’ll at least know who you’re spending time with.”