A Week in the Snow (26 page)

When the doors opened, he came face to face with his mother-in-law. Grace was a small, compact woman with a dark complexion, so different from the fair skin of her daughter. Her hair was almost black and the curls clung close to her head. Her dark eyes studied him warily as he stepped from the elevator.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked immediately, and Grace shook her head.

“You didn’t need to see her like that.”

So there it was, the real reason Amanda had disappeared. Richard looked down the hallway at the closed doors with their tiny windows and wondered which one held his wife.

“I would have helped her,” he said to Grace now. “I would have done whatever I could to help her. You knew that.”

“She made us promise not to tell you.”

Somehow Richard suspected this wasn’t true, but he let it go. What good would an argument do at this point? The last three years could never be taken back, and, though he was sad about the way things had turned out, he wasn’t about to rehash the bad memories.

“What happened to her?”

Grace sighed and her whole body seemed to get smaller. Richard felt sorry for her—no matter how she had lied to him, or what she had hidden, her daughter was very sick. He couldn’t imagine what that must be like, and he hoped he would never find out. He reached out and touched Grace’s shoulder, and that simple human connection seemed to break something in her. She began to sob there in the hallway, and Richard pulled her into a warm hug.

“Let’s go get something to drink,” he said to her, leading her into the elevator. “You can tell me over some coffee, okay?”

The doors closed behind them. Richard would come back to see Amanda later. Right now, Amanda’s mother was the one who needed him more.

“She was always a flighty kid,” Grace said, stirring cream into her coffee. The tears had worn themselves out for the time being, and now she sat at the cafeteria table with the kind of dignity Richard had always seen in her. “She had big dreams. Big fantasies. She would spend weeks on end playing princess…she would be in perfect character when she woke up and still in character when she went to bed. At first it was annoying, then it was eerie, but after a while it became a part of who she was, and we just didn’t notice it anymore.” Grace shrugged. “It was just a quirk.”

Richard nodded and sipped his own coffee.

“She had her first breakdown when she was sixteen. Some high school boy broke her heart. She started crying and just didn’t stop. We finally took her to the doctor and he prescribed some medicine for her. Something to calm her down, you know. We got home and thirty minutes later I found her in the bathroom with the empty bottle beside her.”

Richard winced. He knew it was bad, but he hadn’t realised how much so.

“That was our first trip to the ER. Stomach pumped. She had a psych consult, and they said she needed evaluation. She ripped the IV out of her arm and tried to leave the hospital. Blood was flying everywhere from that IV, she was still throwing up from the pills, and she was screaming about being in prison.” Grace shuddered. “It was terrible.”

“It sounds like it was.”

“There were a few other episodes. They all lasted a few weeks, then she would get her meds adjusted, and she would be on an even keel again. Then you came along, and there were no more episodes. We figured she had grown out of it, and we were so grateful.”

Richard wiped his eyes and stared at his coffee.

“Her episodes were attached to emotional upheaval. We thought she might have an episode when you got married, with the stress and everything, but she came through with flying colours. She acted perfectly normal, and that was a credit to you. You’re so steady, Richard. So solid. We knew you were good for her.”

Richard let out a harsh laugh. “I missed it, Grace. I missed the signs.”

Grace patted his hand. “She was very good at hiding it, Richard. And when she did start to slip a little, she came to me. She said she thought she was going into a bad place, like she had before. I took her to a doctor, and he said she needed intense therapy. She didn’t want to get it, so she went back to you, and I kept waiting for a call. An episode. A trip to the ER. Something.”

“But it never happened. She just disappeared one day.”

Grace smiled sadly. “That was her episode. You didn’t miss it, Richard. She ran off and, for a long time, we didn’t know where she was, either. I know you thought I did, but I didn’t.”

“Where did she go?”

“I’m not sure,” Grace said. “She called me about three months later. Said she was happy again.” Grace paused and fiddled with her napkin. “There was a man involved.”

So it was true, then. Richard shook his head as he wondered which parts were true, and which parts weren’t, and if he would ever know for sure.

“She said she left me for someone,” he told Grace.

“She didn’t leave you for someone, but she did meet someone when she was gone.”

“Is there a difference?”

Grace studied him for a moment, then shook her head. “Not to the heart, there ain’t.”

Richard got up and refilled his coffee cup. Grace watched him the whole time, and when he sat down again she said, “The latest episode happened when you filed for divorce.”

“It’s my fault, then.”

“It could only be your fault if you knew,” she reminded him.

“So she came back and thought we could make it work, but then there was Rebecca.”

Grace nodded sadly. “Yeah.”

They sat silently, thinking about the woman on the seventh floor, the one Grace loved, the one Richard had moved on from, but still felt responsibility for.

“I think you should go through with the divorce,” Grace said suddenly, startling him. “You’ve waited for her for three years. That’s a long enough time, no matter what your momma says. Besides, there’s Rebecca, and she doesn’t deserve to be left hanging.”

Rebecca was at his home right now, nursing wounds inflicted by his wife, and she had promised to wait for him. She had flown from Miami to find him, confronted his wife to claim him, and had reassured him every step of the way. No, she did not deserve to be left hanging.

“I feel guilty,” he admitted to Grace. “I was her husband, and I didn’t go looking for her. Then I filed for divorce, and sent her off the deep end. I feel like much of it is my fault.”

“She’s sick,” Grace reminded him. “That’s nobody’s fault.”

Richard nodded, though he wasn’t entirely convinced. Grace patted his hand one more time and stood up from the table. “I’m going upstairs,” she said. “Why don’t you go see Rebecca, and come back tomorrow, when Amanda is a little more like herself.”

Richard nodded and watched Grace walk away, knowing Amanda would never be herself again.

Rebecca was waiting for him when he got home. As his headlights washed over the house, she came out on the porch to greet him in her bare feet, even though it was below freezing. Her whole body hurt, her face worst of all. She had used ice packs and ibuprofen from his medicine cabinet, but the pain had hardly eased. The pain in her heart, however, was now for someone else, not for herself.

“How is she?” she asked as he came up the walk.

He shook his head and urged her into the house. “You’re going to freeze.”

“Is she going to be all right?”

Inside the house, the fire was roaring. Richard stood in front of it and warmed his hands while he thought about the things Grace had said, and where Amanda’s life might be headed. “She’s in the psych ward,” he said, and Rebecca sank down on the couch, stunned.

“You mean, she’s…they committed her?”

“Apparently this isn’t the first time.”

Rebecca felt horribly guilty, not only for the way she had provoked Amanda, but for the things she had said about her in the past. Hindsight was twenty-twenty, and right now hindsight was a vicious bitch hell-bent on reminding Rebecca of all the mistakes she made.

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

“Her mother told me the whole story,” he said, then explained everything to Rebecca.

She sat still as a stone, watching him and listening to every word, wishing like hell she had never pushed Amanda over the edge. But how could she have known? She didn’t even know the edge was there.

“They are going to keep her?”

“She’s in for at least two weeks.”

Rebecca took a deep breath. Her ribs hurt. She went to the kitchen for an ice pack and came back to find Richard facing the fire, his back to the doorway. She watched him stand there, read defeat in the slump of his shoulders, heard the sighs that came from deep in his body, the ones that said he was more tired than he had been in a long, long time. It had been a long and draining time for all of them.

Richard heard her come into the room and turned to look at her. He was dead on his feet, but there were more things he had to say before he collapsed into bed.

“I want you to know,” he said, “I’m going through with the divorce, Rebecca.”

She sat gingerly on the edge of the couch. She had thought about that long and hard while he was gone, and she had decided that if he chose to stay married to Amanda she would have to live with that. It would break her heart, but she knew he was the kind of man who did the right thing, and she had no idea what the right thing might be in a situation like this. She would trust his judgement, even if that meant letting him walk away from her.

“Richard…”

“Yes, I’m sure. Amanda was gone for years, and my heart has moved on. No amount of explanations can change that. I’m sorry she’s in this terrible state right now, and I’ll do what I can to help, but I’m not going to stop the divorce because she came back.”

Rebecca’s heart swelled with happiness, even as a part of it broke for the woman he had once loved. Regardless of the trouble Amanda had caused, Rebecca wanted to see her get better, and she didn’t want her to suffer the heartache of losing the man she loved.

But that was the same man Rebecca loved, and she didn’t want to give him up.

She rose from the couch, put her arms around Richard, and kissed him on the forehead. “Let’s get some sleep,” she said. “The world will be clearer tomorrow.”

Chapter Eighteen

They awoke the next morning to the sun streaming in through the windows. It was just like the days they had awakened to after a lazy night of lovemaking, the sunlight their only alarm clock. This time wasn’t nearly as calm, as Rebecca stretched and cried out in surprise. The pain of her altercation with Amanda had caught her off guard, no matter how many ibuprofen she had taken.

“Whoa, now, easy,” Richard said, touching her arms gently, looking into her face. The bruises looked terrible this morning, as he had known they would, but the cuts looked much better than they had when they had been fresh. Now that she was naked in the sunlight, he could see the bruises on her ribcage too, and the one really good one on her breastbone, almost directly between her breasts.

Amanda had to be insane with rage to do that kind of damage.

Rebecca smiled at him. Her lips were still swollen and one eye was looking pretty rough, but she was still more beautiful than any other woman he had ever seen. He leant forward and kissed her carefully, afraid of hurting her. She ran her hands through his hair and kissed him back, pulling him closer with every passing minute, until he was almost on top of her.

“Make love to me,” she whispered, and he shook his head.

“No way. I’ll hurt you more than anything else.”

She smiled against his lips. “You can be gentle as a whisper, Mr Paris.”

He protested as she lay down and pulled him over her. It wasn’t just his fear of hurting her, and when she saw that scared look in his eyes she knew his hesitation was much bigger than it appeared.

“What did she say to you?” she asked softly, and Richard looked away, unable to meet her eyes.

“She said her lover was better than me. That she had learned there was more to sex than the missionary position.” The words had been hard to hear and, now, they were even harder to say. Rivers of shame tore through him as he said them, wondering anew if they were all true, or if she had just set out to hurt him.

Rebecca sat up and forced Richard to look at her. “She lied.”

“But…”

“She lied, Richard. You’re a kind and attentive lover, and you’re exciting, too. I’ve never met a man who would so readily share his fantasies with me, or ask me about mine, and do his best to make them all into a reality.”

Though her words warmed him, the doubts still lingered. Rebecca knew what those doubts were like—she had felt more than a few of her own in the past. It would take a long time for them to fade, and there was no better time than now to start working on it.

“Make love to me,” she said again.

Richard was almost afraid to touch her. He hadn’t known until that moment how badly mere words could hurt, how paralysing a fear they could bring to the surface. He gently touched Rebecca’s breast and she smiled at him, encouraging him to keep going.

“Rebecca,” he murmured. “I can’t, honey. I just can’t.”

She bit her lip and studied him. She knew full well it wasn’t a rejection of her, but it felt very much like one, and she silently cursed Amanda for her ability to hurt both of them, even when she wasn’t there.

“Then let’s get dressed and go back to your office,” she said. “We’ve got plenty of time to overcome this, and I’m not about to push you until you’re ready.”

“Isn’t that always the man’s line?” he teased, relieved she wasn’t going to insist.

She carefully got out of bed and walked to the shower. She climbed in and Richard was right behind her, both of them under the water and using the soap, but neither one of them trying the sexual games that had happened the last time they were in a shower together. Now that Rebecca was moving around she felt much better, but she avoided the mirror. She didn’t want to know how bad it looked.

She solved the problem of making herself presentable by wrapping a scarf around her neck. It was one of Richard’s, old and thin, but perfect for what she needed. Her black eye would still be evident, but was there anyone in town who didn’t know what had happened? Rebecca was sure the gossip wires had hummed well into the night and got an early start this morning.