All Who Are Lost (Ashmore's Folly Book 1) (42 page)

She didn’t know where all that had come from. Remembering for Julie how Dominic had planned her future for her? Coming back to this house, sitting at this piano, with the shadows of those long-ago lessons too close at hand? Dead or not, Dominic Abbott still dominated the room. She could feel his spirit at her shoulder, as if, even in death, he reached out to hold her down at the piano when she would have escaped, because she hadn’t held the note long enough and he still wasn’t satisfied.

The memory of those eyes, as he told her to try again, and then again, chilled her skin.

She shuddered, and looked down at her hands, lying in her lap.

“Oh, my God,” whispered Diana, “it’s like listening to him. Did he do it to you too?”

Laura said wearily, “You got away, Di. What do you think happened after you got married?”

Something strange flickered in Diana’s eyes. “You think marriage saved me? Think again.” She straightened the octavos. “So what happened? Francie became the next Tebaldi?”

Laura shook her head. “He didn’t go after her. He went after me.”

She folded her arms against her chest to keep warm.

“You know why, don’t you?” Diana considered her. “You
do
, don’t you?”

She said nothing. She should have eaten some breakfast; she was starting to feel sick.

“I’ll tell you why.” Diana’s voice did not sound pretty now. “For the same reason he went after me. For the same reason he left Lucy alone. It wasn’t just Peggy and Philip protecting her – he wasn’t that interested in her ever. How much time did he spend with Francie compared to you?”

Oh, God, Diana had known. She had known, and she had done nothing. Laura drew a breath. “About half as much. He said I needed it more than she did.”

“You probably did,” said Diana flatly. “Francie had a pleasant little voice. She’d have done real well in a church choir. He wasn’t going to waste his time on her.”

It had been one thing to say it to Julie. Her niece hadn’t known Francie, hadn’t hated her. It was something else to hear Francie’s enemy – she with blood on her hands – utter the thoughts that had surely never been said aloud before: that Dominic was too much the professional musician not to have known who in the family had it and who did not.

And, with all the ruthlessness and efficiency he had shown for so long, he had channeled his resources where time and effort might pay off.

But he had turned his sights on Laura only because Diana had escaped him.

She gathered her strength. “It doesn’t matter about me. You still
sang
, Di, even away from him. I remember your concert, you were – oh, my God, you were incredible. Why give that up?”

She caught sight of Diana’s face, hard and withdrawn, and thought that she had never seen anyone so bleak.

“It was yours, it wasn’t his. He had no claim over you anymore. He couldn’t do anything to you. Richard wouldn’t have let him.” She felt a terrible pressure in her lungs, as if she were caught underwater, desperate for air. “Why did you throw it away?”

Why did you throw Richard away? Or Julie?

“Why?” Diana’s voice echoed eerily in the room. “I’ll tell you why. Because it wasn’t mine, not really. It was hers. He saw her in me.” She gave Laura a hard look. “And I guarantee you that he had plans for me that he never had for you. Do you know what he said one night?
Do you know?
”

Surely Diana could hear the pounding of her heart.

“One night,” Diana stopped and considered, her eyes staring beyond Laura, “one night, the year before Julie was born, he said that eventually I’d take her place. I’d—” She turned her head away, and Laura heard a hard intake of breath. “I’d sing Medea. That was her great role, you know, Daddy said at her best she could rival Callas. He wanted his Medea back. He intended,” and she stopped and looked down, “to get her back through me.”

In her voice, flat and unmelodious, lurked a despairing darkness. The absence of life, love, laughter. Laura couldn’t remember ever hearing such hatred in her life. If she had ever any doubts about the pathology of her sister’s heart, she had lost them now.

“I will never,” said Diana, “sing in public again. He’ll never have that from me. And now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to make some tea. Want some?”

~•~

Tea did not help the sickness. That glimpse into her sister’s darkness haunted Laura. She moved around the kitchen next to her sister, brewing tea, fixing toast, and nothing helped. Diana seemed not to notice.

In the few minutes before Laura had joined her in the kitchen – minutes that Laura had spent in the powder room, staring at her colorless face in the mirror, summoning up her courage to go back and confront her sister – Diana had helped herself to one of her stimulants of choice. She seemed revitalized, wound up tight, giddy to the point of absurdity. She started talking, and for a long time, she did not stop. She chattered gaily about clothes, about the concert, about her dream vacation driving around Europe – hopping from topic to topic, talking faster and faster. Her words filled the room – empty, nonstop words, spoken for noise, to banish the silent brutal mirror she could not face.

Maybe those volumes of words kept her demons at bay.

Laura tried to listen but slowly tuned out. She’d left Lucy’s office two days before, vulnerable and dissected; now she longed for Lucy’s blunt honesty. She knew where she stood with Lucy. Maybe Lucy did not approve of her, maybe that X-ray vision probed into thoughts and longings best kept hidden, but she spoke her mind. No darkness lingered in Lucy; she was sunlight and health. She was one of the living still, rock-solid, not a ghost trapped in this terrible room.

“One thing, Laurie.” She became aware that Diana was demanding her attention. “You mentioned paying me for the clothes—”

“Right.” Laura shook herself into alertness and glanced around for her purse. “I’ll get my checkbook. How much do you want?”

“No, no.” Diana shook her head for emphasis. “Not money. I’m not that desperate. But you do have something, if you don’t mind – you never went there, it can’t mean anything to you—”

“What?” She looked at Diana in consternation. “What are you talking about?”

“The cottage,” said Diana. “You know, Ash Marine? Daddy’s cottage?”

“What about it?”

“The cottage,” Diana said patiently. “I want it.”

She said slowly, “Why ask me? Didn’t Daddy leave it—” And then, fresh horror flooding through her, “Oh, God, no, tell me he didn’t leave it to me.”

“Are you saying you didn’t know?” Diana didn’t bother to hide her skepticism. “I thought that’s why you came back.”

~•~

He had known. Somehow – how? – he had known.

Across the years, Dominic Abbott saluted her mockingly.
Darling girl, of course I knew what the cottage meant to you! Take it, acushla, you earned it, my token of appreciation for nearly destroying Richard Ashmore. And if you destroyed yourself too – ah, you learn to live without a soul, don’t you now?

Pain burst behind her eyes.

Diana was looking at her curiously. Laura said, “Did he give a reason why? He hadn’t seen me for years – he didn’t know where I was—”
Oh, yes, he did. Cam was paying you off. Was that it, Daddy? Did Cam strike some kind of deal with you?

“How would I know?” said Diana. “He didn’t say anything to me.”

If Daddy knew, did Cam know? How in the name of God did Cam find out?

She forced herself to speak. “Did he leave Francie anything?”

Diana shook her head. “Not that I know of. Nothing that’s mentioned in the will.”

So Dominic had known that Francie was dead. He had preserved documents for Laura, because he had known definitively that she was still alive. But Francie’s birth certificate, her passport – all that was gone. He had discarded those; he had known they would never be needed again.

Laura stared down at her jeans, her ring finger worrying a frayed thread. “I don’t want the cottage, Di. It’s yours. What do I need to sign? Should I talk to Lucy?”

“I don’t think it’s that simple.” Diana’s curiosity had retreated. She poured herself another cup of tea into their grandmother’s old Limoges china. “I think there’s something about if you don’t want it, it goes to your children. I remember Lucy saying that we couldn’t just file abandonment papers, because you might have kids.”

Under the nausea, she felt consumed with fury. Had Cam told Dominic about Meg, or had that just been a lucky shot in the dark? “I’ll talk to Meg’s trustee.”
And if I find out Cam told Daddy about Meg, I will go spit on that memorial stone. Both of them.
“I’m sure we can decline the cottage for Meg.”

“Great.” Diana’s face brightened. “I’ve always liked the place. Very private and peaceful.” She arched an eyebrow. “Let’s just say I’ve got a lot of sentimental attachment. When Richard turned sixteen—” She stopped. “Never mind. That was a magical night. I’ll never forget it, and I bet he won’t either.”

I’ll just bet.
She stared hard into her tea cup, fixing on an errant tea leaf, focusing all her anger into that floating little speck. The nausea had receded, the anger had flooded back, recalled by Diana’s light tone and fond memories of sexual surrender to a young man her sister would have killed for.

Had tried to kill for.

As quickly as that, she felt something go cold and still inside. The memories of the house vanished into the ether, and she remembered why she had come.

She put her tea cup down and looked Diana straight in the eye.

“How can you possibly talk like that? Aren’t you sorry at all about Francie?”

“Francie?” Diana’s face altered, shadowed, darkened. She too put her cup down, and Laura noticed, with a clarity born of rage, that the cup rattled as she set it into its saucer. “What’s she to do with this? And why are you bringing her up, anyway? You know I don’t like to talk about her.”

“Oh, I know you don’t.” The tide of rage began to ebb in its turn, leaving the sands of her emotions cool and open. She felt very much in control. “Too bad, Di. Maybe you don’t remember, God knows what you’ve been putting in your system, but Francie
died
out there. And you feel a sentimental attachment to the cottage? How can you feel
sentimental?
Don’t you feel any guilt at
all?
”

Diana had gone pale under the force of attack, her eyes sunk back, her lips open with no words, no defense. Her voice was the merest breath. “I don’t understand – Francie
died
out there – how—”

“Oh, don’t lie, please!” She was fed to the teeth with lies. “I know what happened.”

For eleven years, she had waited to see the guilt on Diana’s face. That late afternoon, Francie and Diana had met on the shore of the Chesapeake, and the wrong sister had lived. Francie’s killer sat there now, her face still seized with shock, and Laura felt the first breath of doubt. She saw no guilt, only Diana pulling herself together after the surprise attack, a straightening of the shoulders, a forcing of dignity to her lips as she said, “What are you talking about? Lucy said she died in some plane crash in Texas.”

“My
mother-in-law
died in that crash, not Francie.” The doubts rose up now in siege. “The call, Di. Francie called you from the cottage. August, eleven years ago.”

Francie had made the call in front of her, claiming that she wanted a witness, coaxing Diana to meet her at the cottage, a meeting of reconciliation. A meeting that she did not intend Diana to survive…. All the time Francie had talked, she had fingered the handbag where she kept her small automatic, the gun Cam had taught her to use because she lived alone….

“She wanted you to meet her out at the Ashmore cottage. You were supposed to meet at two, I think, to talk things out so she could come home.”

Her eyes flickered. “So you must have been there.”

“She wanted me there when she made the call.”

Diana made a motion towards her cup, blindly, as if she couldn’t see it. “Of course I remember that. I was stunned when she called out of the blue like that – she didn’t say you were with her.”

“I wasn’t going to meet with you.” Francie had “repented” of her plan to kill Diana after Laura had threatened to go to Cam.
Okay, you don’t trust me, come with me! Of course I won’t do anything to her. I’m not a monster….
And when Laura dragged her feet about the trip, hoping Francie would change her mind:
I need you, Laurie, you’re my balance, my conscience….
But that morning, Francie had firmly nixed her offer to mediate with Diana.
I’ll go by myself…. No, don’t come with me. We’ll discuss Richard. You’ll like him better if you don’t hear what I have to say. Just wait for me here…. I’m just going to talk to her. Honestly, Laurie, I promise! Would I have asked you along if I was planning anything? Look, have some tea, I’ll be back soon….

“I didn’t see her.” Diana’s lips were barely moving; Laura had to lean in close to hear her. “I – I had an appointment that morning, and then I went looking for Richard—”

“She went out to meet you—”

“Then – when I couldn’t find him – well, I thought, maybe she called him too, maybe he went out there to her—”

“No, he wasn’t there, she never called him, I’d have known—”

“I have the worst luck with cars – I had a flat tire, and I didn’t know how to fix it, and you know there’s not much traffic out there. I had to walk a couple of miles in the hot sun to find a phone to call the auto club.” Her mouth trembled. “You don’t believe me, do you? I can see it on your face, you don’t believe me—”

“She never came back, Di! She went out to meet you, try to make up—”

“She never came back?”

“It got late in the afternoon. I needed her.” The fever rising, the sun sliding down towards the horizon, the shadows elongating into the worst nightmares, the wind rising through the shattered windows, the baby dying in her womb. “I finally went looking for her, and I found her in the cove.”

She lay, half-turned on her back, her right arm flung out with her head resting on it. From a distance, she looked like a sunbather in a painting, but Francie would never again turn to greet her, never again smile lazily and pat the sands invitingly. That sundress might once have been white, those arms might once have lifted towards a young man in ecstasy. But not ever again. Francie had fought hard for her life, and she had lost.