Chapter Seven
Liam stared at the mail in his lap. Almost all of it was addressed to Mikaela. Bills from the Country Corner General Store and the feed store, stabling and lessons checks from the twelve families who paid to board their horses at the barn, postcards and leaflets and flyers. A postcard announcing Nordstrom’s latest sale.
In ordinary times, he would have gone into the kitchen and tossed the postcard on the kitchen table and said, “Oh, no, the Christmas sale is starting….” She would have laughed easily, turning away from the stove or the refrigerator or the washing machine as she said, “We’ll just sell a few shares of Microsoft to get me through….”
“Daddy, why are we sitting at the mailbox?”
“Oh. Sorry about that, Bretster. I was just thinking about something.” Tossing the pile of mail into the well between them, he eased his foot off the brake pedal and pressed cautiously on the gas. The Explorer’s tires spun on the mushy rim of the road, then grabbed on to the gravel and lurched forward. Ahead of them, the deserted road was a twisted river of fallen snow. Towering Douglas firs and cedar trees, their downslung branches dusted white, hemmed the thin strip of road that Ian Campbell had carved from the forest almost fifty years ago. There were a few other farmhouses along the way, their slanted, rock-dented mailboxes stuck at haphazard angles on spindly wooden legs.
“Maybe we could build a snowman after dinner,” Liam said awkwardly, wondering where Mikaela kept the mittens and the extra woolen socks. He knew there was a box somewhere, probably marked Winter clothes, but he couldn’t remember where they’d stashed it last year. Maybe behind the stack of Christmas decorations in the attic.
“Oh. Okay.”
“Or maybe we could drive down to Turnagain Hill and go sledding. Mr. Robbin told us to come on down anytime for dinner.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Liam couldn’t think of anything else to say. They both knew there would be no sledding, no ice-skating, no snowmen, and no hot cocoa. Not now. They would think of such things, perhaps even talk about doing them, but in the end, as they’d done for the past four weeks, they would come together in that big house in the middle of the snowy field and go their separate ways.
They would eat dinner together, each one in turn tossing out some inane, pointless bit of conversation. After dinner they would do the dishes, the four of them. Then they would try to watch television together, Wild Discovery or maybe a sitcom, but gradually they would drift apart. Jacey would burrow into her room and talk on the phone. Bret would settle in front of his computer and play loud, fast-paced games that required his full attention, and Rosa would knit.
Liam would float from room to room, doing nothing, trying to keep his mind blank. More often than not, he ended up in front of the grand piano in the living room, staring down at the keyboard, wishing the music was still in his heart and in his fingers, but knowing that it was gone.
He downshifted and turned left, passing beneath the rough-hewn arch his dad had constructed years ago, onto the driveway that was lined with snow-dusted four-rail fencing. In some distant part of his mind, he heard the gentle clanking of the iron sign that hung suspended from the cross-beam of the cedar arch, the one that read ANGEL FALLS RANCH. Or maybe it was his imagination, that sound, and all he really heard was the tinny silence between himself and his son.
He pulled into the garage and turned off the engine. Bret immediately unbuckled his seat belt, grabbed his backpack, and hurried into the house.
Liam sat there, hands planted on the wheel. He didn’t look at the album and present he’d tossed in the backseat, but he knew they were there.
Finally he got out of the car and headed into the house, passing through the cluttered mudroom. At the end of the hallway, a light glowed faintly orange.
Thank God for Rosa.
He was still a little awkward around her, uncomfortable. She was so damned quiet, like one of those Cold War spies who’d learned to walk without making a sound. Sometimes he caught her staring at him, and in her dark eyes he saw a sadness that went clear to the bone. Sometimes he wished he were the kind of man who could go to her, smiling, and say, So, Rosa, what happened to you? But that’s not how they were with each other. If Liam had asked the personal question, Rosa wouldn’t have answered. And so, they moved around each other, close but not too close.
Now, as he moved through the house, he flicked on the lights. No matter how often he told Rosa that electricity was cheap, she turned on only the lights she needed.
Not like Mike, who hated a dark house.
When he reached the great room, he stood in the shadows, watching Rosa and Bret set up for Yahtzee. Within minutes they had a game going. He wished he didn’t notice how quietly Bret played. There was none of the clapping or whistling or “All rights!” that used to be his son’s natural soundtrack.
They were quite a pair, the silent little boy with the blackening eye and his equally solemn grandmother.
She was such a small woman, Rosa, only a hand’s width taller than her grandson, and the way she moved—head down, shoulders hunched—made her appear even smaller. Tonight, as usual, she was dressed all in black. The somber fabric emphasized the snowy whiteness of her hair and skin. She was a woman of sharp contrasts. Black and white, cold and warm, spiritual and down-to-earth.
Rosa looked up and saw him. “Hola, Dr. Liam.”
He’d told her a dozen times to please, please call him Liam, but she wouldn’t do it. Smiling, he moved toward them. “Who’s winning?”
“My grandson, of course. He takes advantage of my fading eyesight.”
“Don’t listen to her, Bret. Your grandma sees everything.”
“You would like to join us, sí?”
“I don’t think so.” He ruffled Bret’s hair—a substitute for time and intimacy, he knew—but it was all he could manage.
“You sure, Dad?” Bret’s disappointment was obvious.
“I’m sure, buddy. Maybe later.”
Bret sighed. “Yeah, right.”
Liam headed toward the stairs.
“Dr. Liam, wait.” Rosa stood up in a single, fluid motion and followed him into the dining room.
There, in the dark, quiet room, she stared up at him. Her eyes were as black as pools of ink, and as readable. “The children … they are much quiet today. I think something is—”
“It’s our tenth wedding anniversary.” He blurted the whole sentence out at once, then he slowed down. “The kids … knew I’d bought Mike tickets to Paris.”
“Oh. Lo siento.” Something close to a smile breezed across her mouth and disappeared. “She is lucky to have you, Dr. Liam. I do not know if I have ever told you this.”
It touched him deeply, that simple sentiment from this woman who spoke so rarely. “Thanks, Rosa, I—” He started to say something else—what, he didn’t know—but all at once his voice dried up.
“Dr. Liam.” Her soft voice elongated the vowels in his name and turned it into music. “Come play a game of Yahtzee with us. It will help.”
“No. I need …” A bad start. There were so many things he needed. “I have something to do upstairs. Jacey needs to borrow one of Mike’s dresses for the winter dance.”
She leaned closer. He had an odd sense that she wanted to say something more, but she turned away and headed back to the game.
Liam went into the kitchen and poured himself a drink. The Crown Royal burned down his throat and set his stomach on fire. Holding the drink tightly, he moved up the wide staircase to the second floor. He could hear music seeping from beneath Jacey’s closed door. At least it was considered music by Jacey, some jarring, pounding batter of drums and electric guitars.
With a glance down the hallway, he turned into his bedroom and flicked on the light. The room, even in its current state of disarray—unmade bed, shoes and clothes and bath towels scattered across the floor—welcomed him as it always did. The creamy walls, stenciled with stars and moons, the gauzy drapery of the canopy, the creamy Berber carpet. If he closed his eyes, he could imagine Mike standing there at the French doors, looking out at the falling snow. She would be wearing the peach silk nightgown that fell in graceful folds down her lithe body.
He refused to close his eyes, but it was tempting, so tempting. Instead he stared straight ahead.
The door to Mike’s walk-in closet seemed to magnify before his eyes. He hadn’t ventured into it since the day of the accident, when he’d naively packed her a suitcase full of things she might need at the hospital.
He crossed the room and paused at the closet, then he reached for the knob and twisted. The oak door creaked and swung inward easily, as if it had been waiting for this moment for weeks.
A floor-length mirror along the end wall caught his image and threw it back, a tall, lanky man with unkempt hair and baggy clothes parenthesized by colorful fabrics. On either side of him, clothes were hung on specially ordered plastic hangers, the colors organized as precisely as an artist’s wheel. The ivory plastic of Nordstrom’s designer departments hung clustered in one area. Her evening clothes.
It took him a minute to get his feet to move. He began unzipping the bags, one at a time, looking for the dress Mike had worn to the Policemen’s Ball. At about the sixth bag, he reached inside, and instead of finding a gown of silk or velvet as he’d expected, he found a pillowcase, carefully hung on a pants hanger.
Frowning, he eased it from the bag. It was an elegant white silk affair, not the kind of pillowcase they used at all. On one end was a monogram: MLT.
Mikaela Luna … Something.
His heart skipped a beat. This was from her life before.
He should turn away, zip up this bag, and forget its existence. He knew this because his hands had started to sweat and a tickling unease was working its way down his spine.
Over the years, he’d collected so many questions, stroked them in his mind every time she’d said, Let’s not go there, Liam. The past isn’t something that matters now. Every time he’d seen sadness darken her eyes or known that something had smoothed the edges of her laugh to a quiet mournful sound, he’d wondered why.
The past mattered, of course. Liam had been willing to pretend otherwise because he loved his wife, and because he was afraid of who or what had caused the deep well of her sorrow, but the moment he touched the pillowcase, made of a fabric so expensive he didn’t know anyone who would know where to buy such a thing—certainly Mike wouldn’t—and saw the tantalizing mystery of the MLT monogram, he was lost. The past they’d all ignored was here; it had lived with them all these years, hidden inside a Nordstrom bag in his wife’s closet. And like Pandora, he simply had to look.
Once he had the pillowcase in his hand, he could see plainly that it was stuffed full of something. He felt strangely detached as he walked back into his bedroom and sat down on his big, king-sized four-poster bed, dragging the pillowcase up beside him. He stared down at it for a long time, weighing the danger, knowing that sometimes there was no way to undo what had been done, and that some secrets were composed of acid that, once spilled, could burn through the fragile layers of a relationship.
Still, the lure of finally knowing was too powerful to resist. For years he had longed to tear the lid off her jar of secrets. He’d always thought that if he knew her pain, he would understand. He would be able to help.
These were the lies he told himself as he turned the pillowcase upside down and watched as photographs, newspaper clippings, and official-looking documents, all bent and yellowed, fluttered onto the comforter. The last thing to fall out was a wedding ring with a diamond as big as a dime. Liam stared at it so long his vision blurred, and then he was seeing another ring, a thin gold band. No diamonds, Liam, she’d said softly, and though he’d heard the catch in her voice, he’d paid it no mind. He’d thought how nice it was that she didn’t care about such things.
The truth was she’d already had diamonds.
Turning away from the diamond ring, he saw a photograph, an eight-by-ten full-color glossy print. It was half covered; all he could see was Mikaela in a wedding dress. The groom was hidden behind a carefully cut-out newspaper article. He wanted to pick it up, but his hands were shaking too badly. He thought, crazily, that if he didn’t touch it, didn’t brush away the newsprint, the man in the other half of the photo wouldn’t exist.
He hardly recognized Mikaela. Her wavy black hair was drawn up in a sleek, elaborate twist that glittered with diamonds, and makeup accentuated the catlike tilt of her brown eyes, turned her pale, puffy lips into the kind of mouth that fueled a thousand male fantasies. The sleeveless gown she wore was a soft, opalescent white—completely unlike the conservative cream-colored suit she’d worn for her second wedding. There were oceans of pearls and beads sewn into the silky sheath, so many that the dress appeared to be made of crushed diamonds and clouds. Not a thing of this earth at all.
She, his wife, was a woman he’d never seen before, and that hurt, but the pain of it was nothing compared to the way he felt when he looked at her smile. God help him; she’d never smiled at Liam like that, as if the world were a shining jewel that had just been placed in the palm of her hand.
Slowly he reached for the picture and picked it up. The newspaper clipping fell away and he saw at last the groom’s face.
Julian True.
For a dizzying moment, Liam couldn’t breathe. He could actually feel the breaking of his heart.
“Jesus Christ,” he whispered, not knowing if the words were a curse or a prayer.
She’d been married to Julian True, one of the most famous movie stars in the world.