All Who Are Lost (Ashmore's Folly Book 1) (25 page)

Stalking, Laura. Stalking. How would you like it if someone did this to you?

She ignored her inner voice.

She followed his path around the lake, walked through the grove lining the road to the Folly, and settled down against a tree at the end of the drive. From here, she could see two sides of the house – the front and the western side, dominated by an enormous bank of windows that took up most of the surface of the wall. She trained the binoculars on the window, lit by a diffuse light from somewhere beyond her sight in the house, but nothing happened for a long time. He was probably showering after his run.

She would
not
think about Richard in the shower.

Determined to discipline her mind, she made it a game to name the stars showing up in the June evening sky. She had just found brilliant Vega in the Summer Triangle when a movement at the window caught her attention.

She saw him pass by, turn on a desk lamp, lean over a computer screen that instantly flashed up colored graphics. A slanting board – a drafting table? – cut off part of her view. He appeared over the board, his shoulders moving; he must be working on a design.

And, oh, he looked so good, looking down intently at his work, reaching up to adjust his glasses, taking a sip from a mug. She shouldn’t be thinking that. She shouldn’t be thinking how her heart had tripped at the sight of him jogging by. She should be thinking of the pain in Diana’s eyes, her utter hopelessness as she had run back into the club. She should be thinking of Francie sleeping forever in the depths of the Chesapeake. But here, now, watching him, seeing his concentration, watching him lift his head and stare off in thought, seeing the satisfaction of a solution flash across his face, she could only think how much she had loved him.

Remember Francie, remember Di, remember….

I must be the wickedest, most perverse woman in the world.

His concentration broke at one point. He turned his head and said something, and Laura leaned sideways to see if she could catch sight of Julie. But Julie, just out of sight, frustrated her; Laura glimpsed only the hint of a radiant ponytail and the blue-jeaned curve of a pretty teenage figure.

Reward! Richard laughed, and all stress fled his face. He reached out. Julie moved in towards him, into the curve of his waiting arm, and he hugged her in close.

She barely saw his loving, teasing smile, for the tears misting her eyes.

He’s a good father.

Dominic had never smiled at her with such love.

Julie said something and motioned towards the desk. He turned then, and his back masked his movements from Laura, until he lifted something to his ear and she saw that he was using the telephone. After a minute, he shook his head and replaced the receiver. She wasn’t home, Laura surmised, and did not want to face her jealousy.

He’s not treated like a husband, so why should he act like one?

Julie pointed back at the drafting table, as if to say,
Get back to work, Dad,
and Laura noticed in amusement that Richard did just that. Julie herself disappeared, then reappeared at the front side of the house, opening double glass doors into an atrium to expose a room with a baby grand in front of a wall of etched glass. For a moment she stood there, not more than a few yards away, and then she turned and sat down at the piano, her back to Laura.

Laura had to strain to hear the music through the open doors of the atrium. Something classical, she thought, and she appreciated the depth of her niece’s skill; Julie’s hands flew over the keyboard surely, knowingly. She switched her binoculars back to Richard and caught him watching Julie, with a look that battered at her defenses.

Later, Richard made another phone call; again, he was out of luck. He shrugged and buckled down to work, and Laura began to hate the woman occupying his thoughts.

But impossible to resent Julie, playing her heart out. She finally heard enough to identify the
Pathetique
, third movement, and knew that Julie had inherited Diana’s great skill. She wished she dared to move closer, dared to walk through the open doors and request entrance, dared to hear for herself if Julie had inherited Richard’s great passion.

But she had locked herself out fourteen years before.

She brushed at her eyes and lifted the glasses again. She watched as Julie played, as Richard’s pencil stopped moving, as he turned his head to smile at his daughter.

Lucky, lucky Julie. A beloved daughter of a loving father. Like Meg; like Diana and Francie. Only she had known the cold whip of a father’s voice.

She couldn’t stand any more. It hurt too much, reminded her of too many past rejections, too many times when Dominic had given his attention to Francie. She had only been Francie’s shadow, after all.

For Dominic, for Richard, for them all.

As she turned to leave, she saw Richard lifting the phone.

~•~

Later, Laura sat out on the balcony and stared out over the lights on the Atlantic. Rachmaninoff poured through her headphones, shutting out the gaiety of Saturday night. It did not quite shut out the ringing of the telephone behind her.

Mark, she supposed. He had told her to check in, and she had forgotten. In the depths and heights of this incredible day, Mark had slipped away from her memory. The life she had built with his brother, and now had to build without him, his own power over her present and his plan for the future he wanted with her, seemed like the remnants of an unremarkable dream.

She thought about Diana.

She wondered where her sad, lost sister was tonight. Still at the club, most likely. She crossed her arms on the balcony railing and wondered how Diana, once-lovely Diana, was coping with the day’s revelations, shut away from that circle of love Richard had built for himself across the river.

He threw her out.

We’re going to kill her.

Lucy, left to deal with the wreckage of Francie’s revenge, unaware of the true demons from which Diana fled…. She thought of Lucy’s careful neutrality about her pregnancy, about John who had died and Meg who had lived, and it came to her then that she would do anything for her sisters.

If it meant giving a concert, so be it.

If it meant not seeing Richard…. She’d told him she didn’t want to see him, and she had meant it for at least ten minutes after she’d stalked away from him in the lobby last night. She thought of Diana’s dazed eyes and Francie’s spilled blood, and she hardened her heart against him. She thought of Julie smiling at him, and she wanted nothing so much as to walk again into his arms.

She sat late into the night, listening to her music, ignoring the telephone that continued to ring until eleven. Only then did she remember that it couldn’t have been Mark; he had taken Meg to a baseball game.

She rang voice mail for her messages, and then she knew who had not answered her phone.

Chapter 9: Diana, Beginning

I STOPPED KEEPING A JOURNAL years ago.

I don’t like to write things down. Once it’s in writing, it’s real somehow; it has an existence that can’t be denied. It becomes truth. And I’m no good with the truth, never have been.

My lawyer gave me a yellow pad last night and told me to start making notes on everything that happened between Richard and me, to help us build our case for getting what I want out of him. I asked why, and Kevin said I was going to need something more than Francie.

I asked if I could use a recorder. I’m used to recording thanks to Daddy. So Kevin gave me this digital recorder.

I much prefer recording. If I say the wrong thing, or I decide I don’t feel like Kevin hearing the deepest, darkest secrets of my soul, I can just hit that delete button, and poof! The file is erased from the memory card, and it’s like I never said it. If I never said it, then it didn’t happen. Isn’t technology wonderful?

So now I have this dilemma that’s a long time coming. What’s truth, and what’s a lie? What really happened, and what did I fib about to get out of a jam?

Perhaps I should write down the lies to keep them straight. I actually do a pretty good job, but sometimes it gets to be such a strain, trying to remember which story I told Daddy and which one I told Richard, not to mention the thousands of lies I’ve told Lucy.

The more I think about this, the more I think I’ll do it just for myself. Seeing Laura again has brought back a flood of memories. Since Francie appears to be among the missing – wonder what happened there, note to self, ask Lucy – Laurie is now the only other person on earth who knows how it was to grow up in that house. From her words –
no, Daddy thought I was training for opera!
– her memories are as dark as mine. But she’ll never say anything. You can bet that Miss Cat Courtney doesn’t want the world to know that, for all intents and purposes, she grew up as an abused child. She’ll take that to her grave.

But I don’t want to take it all to my grave. I want the truth to come out someday – Mama’s death, Daddy’s obsession, my marriage. There’s definitely one truth that should come out, but I want to control the timing on that, to minimize the fallout. Maybe I should start trying to remember everything, so that someday when I’m old and gray, I can write my memoirs and set the record straight.

I can see it now.

Memoirs of a Golden Girl Gone Bad?

The Broken Bride?

Two Men Too Many?

Just Leave Me Alone?

~•~

So where should I start?

I’ll start with me, Diana.

My name is Diana Renée Dane-Abbott Ashmore. I am the oldest daughter of Dominic Abbott, ex-monk, and Renée Dane Marlowe, Countess of Shilleen, and when I was five years old, I watched as my father let my mother drown off the coast of Ireland.

Maybe not a good place to start… okay, let’s try this. I am the wife of Richard Patrick Ashmore, master of Ashmore Park, God’s gift to architecture, and all-around Mr. Perfect. I married him eighteen long, long years ago, and for the last seventeen, we’ve hardly spoken to each other.

Oops! Well, that’s laying it on the line. But is being Mrs. Richard Ashmore me? Isn’t that the problem, that it never has been me?

So who am I? Let’s see….

~•~

I really like this wine. This is fun. I should have done this years ago.

~•~

I’ve always thought I’d make a good hermit.

I read somewhere that women are never hermits because they have an enduring need for companionship and bonding. Nonsense! I could be perfectly happy with my piano, my house, my own company. If I could do anything in the world, anything at all, I’d escape to a desert island and lie in the sun staring at the clouds.

Or go live in a nice little place in Paris. Sleep with a man now and then. Drink some wine (okay, so I do that already, probably a lot more than I should, and truth to tell, I sleep with a man now and then too – also probably more than I should). Play the piano! And never sing another note as long as I live.

The sleeping with a man is important, and so is the “now and then.” I do like men, and I do like snuggling up to a warm male body on occasion. Despite what Mr. Perfect believes, because his entire world view is founded on thinking the worst of me, I am
not
a sex-crazed slut stumbling from bed to bed in search of the perfect orgasm. I’ve had some good lovers in my life, one more than a little good, but I can take or leave sex. Mostly leave it.

Well, that’s not the only thing Richard is wrong about, is it?

So where are we? Oh, yes, I am a musician! A
pianist
. Mark that, because it is important. I am not the second coming of Renée Dane, soprano. My mother was one of the great Medeas in opera history, and from the time Daddy retrieved me from the foster home where my sisters and I lived while he was on trial for her murder, he intended me to wipe her memory out. Diana Abbott would take Renée Dane’s place on the opera stage, his own created star. From that moment, everything in my life, every waking moment of every day, was orchestrated to bring about the desired result. I learned languages. I worked on posture and breathing. I followed a prescribed regimen of exercises every day, because a good singer stays in shape (contrary to all that you hear about heavy-chested sopranos). I practiced two hours on the piano and endured two hours of voice lessons – and that was on school days! You can imagine how hellish weekends and holidays were.

And everything went according to plan, until the usual happened. Girl met boy, and….

That’s true on the surface. But I don’t think it’s the true me. Why doesn’t it feel true?

Probably because truth is not what my life is about.

~•~

All right, here’s truth for you.

My life has revolved around two men.

My father. I think of him, and all I remember is:
I want
.

I want you to practice more.

I want that perfect high E.

I want my star.

I want her back.

He never stopped wanting from me. My voice, my talent, my soul. And I never satisfied him. How could I? I wasn’t my mother, not by a long shot. I just looked like her. I didn’t sing like her, I didn’t have her ambition. I just knew how to please men in bed, like her. Face it, in the end, isn’t that all she was really known for?

Well, that and getting killed.

And my second male nexus. Richard. Did I love him ever? I certainly had every reason to, and he had every reason to expect that I did. He was my escape, my savior, and who wouldn’t love a savior? Especially one who looked (
looks
) like that.

But I think of Richard, and all I remember is:
I want
. He never stopped wanting either – not for a long time. Jailers don’t always carry keys, or even chain you to an operatic score and make you practice until you’re so tired you can’t even remember what language you’re singing in. Sometimes they place the bars of expectation around you. Sometimes they jail you with a wedding ring and “wife.” Or, worse, with a baby in your belly, when all you want is to be young.