Gathering Lies Page 13

  Three days ago, any one of us might have turned up our noses at the thick, cloudy brew this made, but we gulped it down thirstily now, grateful for its warmth, its aroma, and the surefire hit on our nervous systems.

  Armed with artificial energy, we set out to look for Luke—Jane, Dana, Kim, Grace and I. Amelia stayed behind with Timmy again, and I couldn’t help but wonder if she was doing this to help Timmy, or to spend more time with our newcomer. Gabe Rossi’s charm was fast working its way with her—and even the other women, before venturing out, had said a few words of encouragement to him, wishing him luck with the fuel tank hoses. What’s more, I’d seen Dana fussing with her hair—something she hadn’t done since the original quake.

  I managed to keep busy cleaning up before we left, which didn’t leave much time to say anything to Rossi. If that made me seem less than hospitable, I didn’t much care. There was nothing about this man that made me trust him, despite his charm. I would bide my time. See how things turned out.

  Jane had insisted on coming with us. “I can’t stand just sitting around thinking,” she said. Dana agreed to keep a close eye on her, and the rest of us finally agreed to take her along, but with reservations. No one trusted Jane anymore.

  She seemed normal enough, however, as she and Dana set out along the shore to the west, while Grace and Kim went around the island to the east, the way Kim and I had gone the time before. I took the middle track, alone, assuring them that with my renewed memories of the island I’d be all right.

  Besides, I added, we needed to go in at least three directions, to save time. We could all meet again at Ransford, where we would undoubtedly find Luke sifting through the ashes from the fire. And if we didn’t find him there, we could at least reassure ourselves that the fire was out and no longer a danger.

  In truth, I wanted desperately to be alone. There had been far too much togetherness the past few days, and I’d lived alone all my adult life. Never having had siblings, I was accustomed to this, and didn’t mind it. In fact, even under the best of circumstances, I craved isolation.

  I also didn’t honestly believe anything had happened to Luke. Whatever he was up to, he wasn’t in danger, I thought, or I’d have sensed it. I’d have felt that aching in my collarbone—the one that signified Luke was in trouble.

  It had been that way with us, all those years ago. Once, when we were both fifteen, Luke had been swept off a rock and had fallen into the water at high tide, a mile or two from his house. I’d been sitting in the Ransford library, reading, waiting for him to come home. He’d gone for a walk, his mother had said, and should be back any moment.

  Luke, too, liked being alone. He would go off on these solitary walks at the drop of a hat, and we all knew he’d come back when he was ready. He’d done that, his mother said, from the time he was eight.

  That particular day, though, I couldn’t stop thinking that something was wrong. It was nothing I’d logically put together. The day was much like all the others. A good, hot, summer afternoon—no rain, no wind, no trouble. Just this aching along my collarbone, a feeling that Luke was in danger.

  I’d put my book down and gone to the window, looking out. Then I’d begun pacing. After a while, I’d gone outside to stand on the path, in hopes I might see him from there. Before I knew it, I was on the beach, walking toward a natural seawall he’d taken me to a few times. I knew he loved standing alone on that jetty, loved the waves coming in and licking at his bare feet. I also knew his parents had warned him to stay off the jetty at high tide, because he could all too easily be swept into the water.

  When I got there, I didn’t see him at first. Then I did. He was indeed in the water, trying to grab hold of a rock. His hands kept slipping. He’d just get to the rock, and the waves would drive him back out. He’d “ride” one in again, and the same thing would happen. I ran along the breakwater, not even thinking about the waves as they lashed at my legs, threatening to pull me in as well. All I could think was, I’ve got to get to Luke. If I could just get to him, somehow it would be all right.

  When I reached him, I held out both hands to try to catch him, not realizing at first how foolish that was. The rubber soles of my tennis shoes slipped on the rocks, and I could see now that this was why Luke’s hands had slipped each time. The rocks were covered here with inches-thick algae. I nearly went in along with him.

  “Get back!” he yelled. “Go back, Sarah! Get help!”

  I wanted to. I was so deep-down afraid, my entire body felt like a steel rod, painful and unbending. My teeth chattered, and my hands shook. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t leave him there.

  I found a rock that was smaller, and clean compared to the others. Wrenching off my T-shirt, I tore the armhole as much as necessary to loop it around the rock. Then I used the rest of the shirt to hang onto as I stretched farther and farther out, reaching for Luke.

  “Here!” I yelled. “Here, this way!”

  He saw what I was doing, and when the next wave brought him in, he grabbed for my hand.

  And missed.

  It took three tries, but at last we connected. Once I had his hand in mine I gave one mighty tug. With the help of the incoming wave, I got him halfway up on the rocks. He began to slide, but now that I had him, I wasn’t letting go. I could feel the T-shirt stretching and, above the noise of the waves I heard it tearing. I knew it was about to come free.

  Letting go with both hands, I grabbed Luke by his shoulders, dragging him farther up to safety, even as my own feet slid from beneath me on the wet granite. The receding wave began to pull me with it, but by this time Luke had a good grip on the rocks, and he hauled me up against him, holding tight.

  It was only then that I realized that in using my T-shirt, I’d left myself naked from the waist up. My breasts were pressing hard against Luke’s bare chest.

  For several seconds, I don’t think either of us thought of the danger we were still in. My eyes met Luke’s, and I could see there the passion that would finally be played out two summers later.

  Coming back to our senses, we scrambled up onto the jetty “path” and ran along it, with Luke in the lead, till we reached dry ground. There, Luke ran to a bush, where he’d hung his shirt on some branches. Beneath the bush were his shoes.

  “Here, put this on,” he said, handing me the shirt and not looking at me. He bent down and put on his shoes, making a great deal of tying the laces, and taking forever to do it.

  At the time, I thought he was embarrassed that he’d had to be saved by me. Later, I learned he had been feeling too many things, and didn’t trust himself to see me naked again.

  I didn’t see Luke for three days after that. When we did see each other, we didn’t talk about that moment. Instead, we laughed about our “close call,” as if it had all been a lark, a day in the park. Luke did thank me, once, for “saving his life,” but even that was done in a humorous tone, which was fine with me. I don’t think either one of us wanted to explore how close we’d come that day. Close to dying—but also, in a strange way, to living.

  What would it have been like, I wondered now, if we’d made love that day at fifteen? Would I have ended up pregnant? Would he have hated me in the morning?

  Again, the road not taken. I would never know how my life might have turned out, had Luke and I done things differently. I might have lived out that adolescent dream and become Mrs. Luke Ford. I might have lived at Ransford, and been a housewife and mother instead of a lawyer.

  Hell, I might have gone nuts, like Jane.

  Sighing, I thought now about how much my head hurt, and how tired I was. Coming to a small clearing in the woods, I decided to sit a few minutes and rest. Ransford could wait.

  Propping my back against the trunk of a tall fir tree, I listened to the singing of birds. They had gone somewhere since the quake, and for a long while the skies had been silent. It seemed a good omen that they’d come back. Perhaps, like the dove after the Great Flood, they brought good news—in this case, that hel
p was on the way.

  I touched my collarbone. It was all right, I thought, to take my time. I didn’t have that aching now. Luke was all right, I was sure.

  A few minutes later, my eyes still closed, I stretched. A psychotherapist I’d seen shortly after my arrest had taught me to release tension by deep breathing. I’d forgotten about that, and did it now, taking in long deep breaths from the diaphragm and letting them out, taking them in and letting them out. Now and then I felt a small aftershock, followed by one that was larger than the others. They seemed to be diminishing in strength overall, however, and most barely shook the ground. Rather, they were like an old, arthritic man, grumbling and complaining as he crawled out of bed in the morning. The fault’s sleep had been disturbed. It needed time, now, to get back to normal.

  “You’ve changed, Sarah.”

  My eyes flew open. Luke was standing a few feet away. His jeans and shirt were black with soot. So were his hands, and there was a smudge on his cheek.

  I sat up. “Been at the house, I see.”

  He nodded.

  “We’re all looking for you,” I said.

  He smiled, taking in my messed-up hair, sleepy eyes and the shirt pulling out of my jeans. “It must be hard to find someone when you’re sound asleep.”

  “True. I figured you were all right, though.”

  “Psychic, now, are we?”

  “No, Dana’s the psychic one here. I just thought I might have some sense of trouble, if there was any.”

  He sat heavily on the trunk of a fallen tree, across from me. “Ah. The collarbones. I remember.”

  I smiled. “It seems they still work.”

  “Well,” he said, “I couldn’t sleep, and I went over to Ransford, looking for things. Photographs, old letters…whatever.”

  “Did you find anything?”

  “Not much. When I got there, it was still dark, and the ashes were still smoldering despite the rain. The fire hadn’t spread into the forest, though. Thank God for ‘the greenest hills you’ve ever seen.’”

  I smiled at the reference to the old song. “Don’t tell me you remember how crazy I was about Bobby Sherman.”

  “I remember a lot of things about you,” he said. “And what I didn’t remember is all coming back.”

  Our eyes met for a moment. Luke glanced away first, looking down and picking at his hand as if to remove a splinter. “Damn! There’s broken glass all over the place. Anyway, I was more tired than I thought. I fell asleep on the beach, near the dock. When I woke up, the sun was shining, and I looked up at the house, forgetting at first that it wasn’t there anymore.”

  He rubbed his face, looking weary and defeated. “I’m afraid your friend Jane did a good job on it.”

  “I’m so sorry, Luke,” I said. “Jane’s been crazy, literally, since the quake. She’s worried about her children.”

  “I can understand the worry,” he said with an edge. “What I can’t understand is why she had to set an entire house on fire. My God, she could have built a bonfire on the shoreline! Why on earth—” He broke off, shaking his head.

  I realized now that last night, when the fire first happened, he’d been in shock. The shock was wearing off, however, and anger had begun to set in.

  “Luke, she lost it,” I said. “I can’t explain why. I didn’t know Jane before I came here, and it’s only been a week since we all arrived. I do think something was wrong before she ever got here, though. Something in her marriage, maybe.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “She and Dana are checking out the shoreline, looking for you. Grace and Kim, too, but they went in the opposite direction.”

  A strained smile appeared in Luke’s eyes. “You needed to be alone. That’s why you were sitting here when I found you, right? You’d gone off on one of those trips you take.”

  “Trips?”

  “Into the past. The future. Wherever it is you go.”

  “I guess. In this case, the past.”

  “You really do seem to have changed, Sarah. What’s happened to you?”

  “Since we last saw each other, you mean?”

  “Well, since you started looking as wary as you do now.”

  “I don’t know, Luke. Maybe I’ve just grown up.”

  “I think it’s more than growing up. You seem hard.”

  I gave a shrug. “I prefer to see it as cautious.”

  “Don’t do that. Don’t play games, not with me. Sarah, what’s happened to you?”

  “I don’t know. My father, maybe.” Better to go there than to tell him the whole stupid story of Ian.

  “Your father?” Luke said. “My dad told me that James had died of a heart attack, but he didn’t say much more than that. What did he do?”

  “Turned on me, when I got arrested. Wrote me off.”

  “Really? That’s hard to believe.”

  “You weren’t there.”

  “No, but it’s still hard to believe. You were always the apple of your father’s eye.”

  “Yeah, well, before he died he told me I was a huge disappointment to him.”

  “He actually said that?”

  “On his deathbed, no less. Funny thing is, I’ve never been sure if he was disappointed in me because—according to the cops, at least—I’d broken the law, or because I got caught.”

  Luke smiled. “Knowing your father, I’d guess it was the latter. Either way, Sarah, I’m sure he didn’t mean what he said. He loved you very much.”

  “Maybe he shouldn’t have,” I said. “Loving people too much can lead to an early death.”

  “Sarah, you did not cause your father’s heart attack,” Luke said firmly. “That’s not the way it works.”

  “Sure it does. Where do you think the term ‘broken heart’ came from? My father died two weeks after I was arrested. Two weeks to the day.”

  He hesitated, as if wondering how to respond. Finally he said, “If James Lansing had a broken heart, Sarah, it wasn’t because of you.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Oh? What does that mean?”

  Again, he seemed to hesitate. “You really don’t know?”

  “No, I do not know. What are you talking about?”

  “Sarah, your father’s heart was broken years ago—back when you and I were kids. Look, I’m sorry, but I thought you knew.”

  I went cold all over, and drew my knees up, wrapping my arms around my legs for warmth. “Knew what? For God’s sake, Luke, spit it out.”

  “Your mother, Sarah. She was in love with someone else. For years.”

  I drew back, half laughing. “That’s ridiculous! Where did you hear such a thing?”

  “From my mother—a long time ago. And it’s not ridiculous, Sarah. It’s the truth.”

  My mouth went dry. I licked my lips and fought back in defense of my parent, though something in me whispered that Luke was not lying. “Well, I don’t know why your mother would say such a thing,” I said, my voice uncertain. “My mother and father were…well, maybe not always the happiest couple. But there certainly was never anyone else.”

  Luke shook his head. “I can’t believe you never saw it.”

  “Saw what? Dammit, Luke!”

  “Your mother, Sarah. Your mother…and my father.”

  “My moth—” This was the last thing I’d expected, and shock left me speechless.

  But with Luke’s words, a memory flashed back: My mother bathing nude in a cove near here, and being caught by Luke’s father. Luke and I came upon them just after Luke’s father had surprised my mother. At least, that’s what I thought—that he’d surprised her. I remembered that she was blushing and grabbing for her towel, and when she saw us she became even more nervous, pulling on her clothes behind a bush—but not before we’d seen that her skin was pink and her lips full and puffy, as if…as if, I thought now with a shock, bruised by the same kind of lovemaking that Luke and I had discovered by then.

  Never had this occurred to me before. My mother…and Luke’s father?<
br />
  Of course. How stupid of me. Of course it was true. There had been signs—the way they looked at each other, the way they danced together. But I’d either refused to see them, or as a teenager I’d just never thought of my parents having love lives.

  Had my mother found her “true love,” as she’d put it that day she described Thornberry as “romantic,” a place where we might find our “true loves”? Or was her fling with Luke’s father only a summer romance, just as mine turned out to be with Luke?

  Dazed, I shook my head.

  “What?” Luke said.

  “I just wonder if I was born stupid, or if I somehow got this way.”

  “You aren’t stupid, Sarah. You just like to believe in people. You’re shocked when you find you can’t, and even more shocked when people don’t believe in you.”

  I looked at him sharply. “How come you know so much about me, when we haven’t even seen each other for years?”

  “Despite what I said about you earlier, people don’t change all that much. Maybe they become more of what they once were. Or a little bit less. Basically, they stay the same, though. That’s how I knew you weren’t guilty of that drug charge, the moment I heard about it.”

  “You did?”

  “Of course I did. But, Sarah, I can see why you weren’t believed. I’ve got a friend on the NYPD, and we’ve talked about this recent rash of accusations against cops. There are a lot of people trying to nail cops these days, especially since that scandal blew up in L.A.’s Rampart Division. Most of the people who were arrested falsely were released from jail or prison when it came out that they were innocent. And that was right—they should have been released. But the extensive media coverage brought out a whole slew of real criminals claiming they, too, were set up. And a lot of good cops in other cities are being brought up on charges, when all they were doing was their jobs.”

  “The ones who set me up were not good cops,” I said with an edge.

  “No, and I’m not saying that—just that sometimes cops need to be given the benefit of the doubt.”

  I laughed scornfully. “Sounds like you’ve changed, too.”

  “In what way?”