Fay Robinson - Coming Home To You

Relax? Not likely. She, on the other hand, looked as if she didn’t have a care. The undisputed favorite in her menagerie of animals had jumped into her lap, and she sat rubbing the old cat with unhurried strokes, pausing to scratch under its neck and feed it a treat from the bowl on the table. They were a matched pair, with their silver-white hair and startling blue eyes. They even had the same expression of cool disinterest.

“That woman is probably worming her way into your son’s house right now, and you’re entertaining the cat,” he told her.

Marianne put the animal on the floor and casually brushed the hairs from her lap. “What do you propose I do?”

“Go down there.”

“That’s unnecessary, I think. She’s probably already gone.”

“And if she’s not? If, in her snooping, she somehow uncovers what I did…”

“She won’t.”

“But he might tell her. Have you considered that?”

Anger flashed in her eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous. He’d never do anything to hurt his family.”

“Not consciously but—”

“Not ever! He’d never betray us, so stop this nonsense and get hold of yourself.”

George blew out a breath in exasperation. Arguing with her wouldn’t do any good. Marianne had always been blind when it came to the children. Bret’s jealousy of his brother was nothing more than sibling rivalry in her eyes. And James had been unhappy for months before Marianne could admit he’d become disenchanted with the success he had worked so hard to achieve.

Even Ellen, the child they shared, was perfect. Marianne refused to see that their daughter’s repeated relationships with men who abused her were a form of self-imposed punishment.

“Fine, M. You sit here with your head in the sand and wait for everything to fall apart,” he said, walking to the door and jerking it open, “but don’t ask me to.”

“Where are you going?”

“The country club.”

“But Agnes will have lunch ready in a few minutes.”

“I plan to drink my lunch.”

“George Conner, don’t you dare,” she called after him, but George had already decided he damn well did dare and kept walking, not bothering to respond.

WHEN THE ELECTRIC GATE at the end of the yard clanged shut and she could no longer hear her husband’s car winding down the narrow mountain road, Marianne allowed herself to give in to the fear she’d hidden from him.

She’d fought numerous threats from unscrupulous writers over the years, writers whose half-truths and lies about James has caused more pain than any family should have to endure. But this biographer, Kathryn Morgan, had a reputation for honesty and integrity, for uncovering the truth. And that made her more dangerous than all the others combined.

If this woman looked deeply into their finances, saw how they’d used the money from James’s estate and the several million in royalties his music continued to produce each year, she could become suspicious. But was she smart enough to figure out what they’d done? And why?

Unsure, Marianne went to her desk in the study, unlocked the bottom drawer and removed the thick file she’d commissioned more than a year ago on Kathryn Morgan. The folder’s front cover had a photograph attached, but she only glanced at it. What interested Marianne were the newspaper clippings, the stories the woman had written as an investigative reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times.

Reading everything took nearly an hour. Finishing the last article, she closed the file with a trembling hand and sat back in her chair to consider what she must do. She’d gotten them into this mess. The responsibility fell on her shoulders to get them out of it. But how?

She had hoped strongly worded letters from her attorney and the refusal of requests for interviews would discourage the biographer from writing this book, or at least from digging deep enough into their past to reveal their complicity.

But no, this woman was not so easily dissuaded. She had been a gifted child, and gifted children became gifted adults. By forgetting that, Marianne had committed a grievous error and put everyone in jeopardy.

A memory from long ago came to her: the old house on Tennessee Avenue and the secondhand piano with its yellowing keys that had occupied a corner of the den. In the memory, Jamie was only three or four and sat on the stool at the piano, his legs still too short to reach the pedals.

He couldn’t yet read, but he was already composing. He played for hours every day, determined that the music coming from the keys would match the music he heard in his head. That intensity, that obsessive need to perform perfectly, had been difficult for her and David to watch in their young son.

As Jamie grew older, his obsession for music and his need to perfect it hadn’t lessened. He’d quickly mastered several instruments and by the time he turned fifteen was composing music that would make him famous.

This writer was equally talented, and although it was with words and not music, she possessed a similar intensity and obsessive need to finish what she started. She wouldn’t quit like the others.

Marianne returned the file to the drawer and took out the small black-and-white snapshot she also kept there. The photograph was creased, slightly out of focus and more than twenty-five years old, but she treasured it for the bittersweet feeling it always gave her when she looked at it.

“Say, ‘Weasels want weenies on Wednesday,”’ David had told the boys just before she’d snapped their picture, sending them into a fit of giggles. At the time, she hadn’t known it would be the last photograph of the three of them together.

Less than two weeks later a car had struck and killed David as he crossed the street in front of the foundry where he worked. Jamie had been ten and Bret five. She’d struggled financially and emotionally to raise them alone until George Conner had given her a job as a receptionist in his dental office and married her a few months later.

Loud knocking on the door of the study and their housekeeper’s voice jolted Marianne out of the past and into the present. “Mrs. Conner, lunch is ready, ma’am.”

“Thank you, Agnes. I’ll be there in a minute.”

She put the photograph back and started to close the drawer, but David’s face drew her gaze again. Dear sweet David who had thought her flawless and had vowed to love her always. He’d never have believed her capable of such deceit.

“What would you think of me now,” she whispered to his image, “if you knew I sacrificed one of our sons to save the other?”

THE SMELL WAS the first thing Kate noticed—manure and urine, mixed with other odors of the animals penned in the large metal building. She’d never been to a horse sale before, had never touched a horse until yesterday, when Hayes had jerked her rudely down from the limb of that tree and onto the back of one.

This place was full of horses, and they could be looked at, stroked, even ridden if she cared to do so. She didn’t. She wasn’t that brave. Or crazy. But before she left tonight, she intended to at least rub one to see what it felt like. That she was brave enough to do.

Glancing around, she suspected right away that she’d chosen the wrong thing to wear. The pristine white slacks and top were cool but impractical for the dirty barn. They made her stand out like a beacon in a sea of denim, boots and western shirts.

She had taken extra care with her makeup and pulled her hair into a practical yet flattering French braid, but here, cowboy hats seemed mandatory, even for the women, and the most popular hairstyle was no style at all. She hadn’t felt this out of place in years.

She shrugged off her self-consciousness, having learned a long time ago that worrying about being different was even worse than being different. People can’t hurt you unless you give them the power to hurt you. Wise words from a wise man. She had listened and remembered.