All Who Are Lost (Ashmore's Folly Book 1) (61 page)

His
daughter. Apparently my twenty-three chromosomes, nine endless months of pregnancy, and five hours of labor counted for nothing.

He scarcely spoke to me at all, the fall of his last year in graduate school. I was desperate for company in that silent house. Even Lucy wasn’t around as much, because she had started law school and was studying almost as much as Richard. “Sorry, Di,” she said after Christmas dinner, while we were washing dishes for Peggy, “I’ve got cases due. I’ve got to live at the library. Why don’t you take Laurie back with you? She’s good company. Besides, poor kid, she could use the break from Dominic.”

Laurie! What a splendid idea! The more I thought about it, the better it sounded. Laurie was a virtual unknown to me, but what I did know was that she was nothing like Francie. She was quiet, sweet, and a good babysitter. She didn’t spend all her time batting her eyes at my husband.

It occurred to me that I really ought to know my last sister a lot better than I did.

“Do you think she’ll come?”

Lucy dried a dish, and she did it so deliberately that I knew, knowing Lucy as I did, that she had a purpose.

“I can’t put my finger on it, Di,” she said at last. “Something is badly wrong with Laurie.”

“Oh?” She had piqued my curiosity now. “What do you mean?”

“She’s changed,” said Lucy. “Oh, she’s always been such a little sober sides, but this last year… did you know she works every day after school in a bookstore at the mall? And Francie says she’s out babysitting every weekend.”

I thought that the answer was perfectly obvious. “She’s trying to make money.”

“Well, of course she is,” said Lucy, and she sounded annoyed, so she must have thought it was obvious too, “but what for? Dominic bought her and Francie a car. Your mother’s estate will pay for college. She’s going to live at home. What does Laurie need so much money for?”

Well, I thought to myself, the winter of my senior year in high school, I’d had to blow every cent I had on
the procedure
, but I couldn’t imagine Laurie in that fix. She’d been dating some boy during the summer, but that was over. Lucy had a point.

Well, if I hadn’t spent it all on rescuing my future (and a great job I’d done of that), why would I have wanted a lot of money?

An irresistible picture came into my head: a wonderful little
pied-à-terre
in Paris, my piano for company, an occasional bad boy to fall asleep with. Free from Daddy and Richard and their oppressive desire to run my life.

The frisson of an idea drifted through my head.

Quiet little Laurie doing something radical like—

Like what? Making a break for it?

The thought seemed so alien that I shook it away. That was me, not Laurie. Still….

I went out to the Ashmores’ great room to find this suddenly interesting sister and found that, once again, Richard had trumped me. He needed someone to do some heavy-duty typing on his thesis, and Laurie, eyes unusually bright, had just agreed to come back to Charlottesville and spend her Christmas vacation working for him.

(Honestly, what was it about Richard that we stupid Abbott girls always fell over ourselves to do his bidding?)

“If that’s all right with you, Diana,” Richard said courteously, apparently realizing that I was nominally the hostess of the household and might not appreciate an uninvited guest. But I was long past the stage of wanting to bury him in something hard and cold just because he had nice manners.

“That’s great,” I said, and I really looked at Laurie for the first time. Lucy was right! My withdrawn little sister seemed different, and not just because her hero had shanghaied her into doing slave labor for him. “We’ll have fun, Laurie. I’ll take you out and show you around when you’re not trying to read his handwriting.”

“I want to go to Monticello,” said Laurie, and sneezed. “I want to see Sally’s staircase.”

“They’ve closed it off, but we’ll go there anyway,” said Richard immediately, but he didn’t see what I saw, that Laurie looked different because she was flushed with fever. What maternal instinct I had came to the surface, and I laid my hand on her forehead. She was burning up. Within minutes, Richard had carried her upstairs to one of the guest rooms, Peggy had her tucked in, mothering and comforting her, and Philip was giving her an antibiotic shot, while Laurie protested that she couldn’t be sick, Richard needed her to type his thesis.

“Why don’t you do it, Di?” said Francie, hovering around Laurie with blankets and wet cloths, and looking genuinely worried. (I will give Francie credit for this. If she cared about anyone besides her own precious self, she cared about Laurie.)

“Because I can’t type.” Several sets of incredulous eyes swung my way. But what did they expect? I was a pianist and, reluctantly, a high school music teacher. I wasn’t a secretary. I hadn’t sworn to love, honor, and type his damn papers for the rest of my life.

“Really?” said Francie, as if she had never heard of a female who couldn’t type. “I can. I’ll do it for you, Richard.”

And, all at once—

Me: “Oh, no—”

Richard: “Fran, are you sure you want to give up your vacation for this?”

Francie: “I’d
love
to help you out, Richard.”

And Laurie, poor little Laurie, innocent catalyst of the disaster, sneezing again.

In that sneeze lay the end of our marriage.

Chapter 20: Nocturne

DIANA ESCAPED SATURDAY NIGHT.

She’d waited all day for her chance. She’d awakened late morning to find a total stranger sitting beside her bed, reading a paperback, and that had upset her. She didn’t like strangers in her bedroom. It was her refuge, her place of safety. No matter what her husband thought, she’d never entertained a lover there. She often shared someone else’s bed, but she never permitted anyone access to her own. She’d waited too long, endured too much, to let another human being intrude on her in her bluebell solitude.

And this intruder was no lover, either. As became increasingly clear throughout the day and a shift change of nurses, the intruders were there to make sure she got some rest, change the bandages on her wrist, and keep an eye on her.

“Did my sister put you up to this?” she demanded of the evening nurse, after the woman marched her through a bath with all the delicacy of a drill sergeant.

“I don’t know who called the agency,” said the woman, probably a very fine nurse when her patience wasn’t being tested as far as it could go. Diana knew she was being a bitch, but she was too mad to care. “Come on, let’s get this done, and then back into bed. I think you’re ready for another tranquilizer.”

And me for a drink
, the woman’s expression plainly said. Lord, Diana hated nurses. Every nurse she’d ever met had seen her at some nadir – enduring the throes of labor, recovering from a particularly hideous hangover, shaking from withdrawal, or bleeding from an ill-advised swipe at her wrists. And every single nurse reminded her of the one she’d hated most, her blasted mother-in-law.

The thought of Peggy Ashmore stiffened her resolve.

“No.” Diana wrenched her wrist, in the process of rebandaging, away from the nurse and back behind her back. “This is my
home
,” she said in her most imperious tones. She’d gained something from all those years of Dominic’s coaching; she could play the ice queen figure to the hilt. “You are here without my permission. Get that?
Without my permission
. Now who the hell authorized this invasion of my privacy?”

The answer, when it came, was worse than she’d imagined. Laura or Lucy were one thing; she could reason with them or at least screen at them without any real consequences. She could overturn their actions because neither had any legal rights concerning her. But the villain turned out to be Mr. Perfect, and he, damn it, had plenty of rights.

Even if he only exercised them when it was most inconvenient.

“Richard!” Diana sat down hard on the bed. “How the hell did he find out about this?”

“I don’t,” said the nurse coldly, “have the faintest idea. Time for your pill.”

She wanted to wipe the smug look right off the woman’s face. Judging from her tone, the feeling was mutual. But then she got a whiff of something… a trace of tobacco clinging to the woman’s uniform, and an idea bloomed.

“Well,” making her tone haughty, “I
am
rather tired.” Too much docility after all the bitchiness might tip the woman off. She took the pill and pretended to swallow; the pill went immediately under her tongue. She climbed back into bed and switched the light off before the nurse could reach it. In the abrupt darkness, she spat the pill out into her hand before the woman’s eyes could adjust to the sudden change of light. “I’ll deal with all this in the morning.”

“Fine,” said the battle-ax, turning towards the door. “You can let the next shift notify Mr. Ashmore.”

“Sure,” said Diana, sounding more cooperative. And then, after a deliberate pause, “Oh, by the way – do you smoke?”

She saw the hesitation of the woman’s silhouette, already at the top stair, and then the nurse came back into the doorway. “Yes,” she said, “I do. Do you want me to go outside to smoke?”

“Yes, if you don’t mind.” Diana tried to sound helpful. “There’s a balcony off the living room. Just unlock the French doors.”

“Thanks.” And the woman went downstairs.

Now she just had to wait. She calculated that, after their confrontation, the woman would need a smoke
tout de suite
, and she’d hear the French doors open. A cigarette should last ten minutes, going by what she remembered of Richard’s smoking, time enough to dress.

She was in luck. The nurse turned out to be a chain-smoker. That not only gave her time to throw on shorts and shirt, but also time to fix her hair in her bathroom and transfer some grass to her purse so that she could light up later on. She opened the drawer where she kept her stash, and discovered that Laura had cleaned her out.

For a moment, she saw red. Damn that interfering –! Or maybe Laura wanted it for herself. Hmmm, now there was a thought. Maybe Miss Goody Two-Shoes didn’t mind an occasional joint herself.

Except that even a joint-smoking Laura was unlikely to have helped herself to the bag of cocaine she’d hidden in a pair of shoes. Diana’s mouth dropped open as she searched through her hiding places and found them empty of the drugs she had assembled painstakingly – and expensively! Did Laura have any idea what this stuff cost! – so that she could hold reality at bay whenever it got a little too insistent.

Well, that settled the question of where she was going when she broke out. She had a
major
bone to pick with her interfering little sister. Hell! Laura was an even bigger pest than Lucy.

While she fumed, the nurse had come back inside. She heard the French doors close, and she switched off her bathroom light and dove under the covers seconds before the woman looked in on her from the doorway. She made her breathing even and shallow.

It was another full hour before the French doors opened again. This time she wasted no time. She stole down the stairs, handbag and sandals in hand, and peered around into the living room from the foot of the stairs. Now to hope that Laura had left the Mercedes keys somewhere accessible – yes! Over there on her desk. She crept across the room, praying that the woman kept looking out over the Atlantic as she puffed away, back turned to the shadow stealing over to the desk.

The keys lay on top of a manila folder on the blotter. Diana’s hand reached out for the keys, touched the largest key, and carefully lifted up the key chain. She dangled the keys in the air, pulling them towards herself soundlessly until her hand clutched them against her blouse. She slid them down her body and into her pocket.

One mission accomplished.

Her recorder lay there on the desk. She hadn’t recorded anything in a couple of days, and she was keyed up and mad enough at Mr. Perfect to do some reminiscing tonight. This might be a good time to vent some spleen about Francie. She picked up the recorder and—

Damn! She must have made some noise. The woman stirred out there on the balcony. Diana melted back into the shadows under the stairwell and prayed that the woman didn’t come back in. If she did – well, the game was up. There was no way she could miss her.

She saw the nurse’s uniform in the glass through the French door panels, and her heart started pounding in her chest. Just when she thought she was getting away! But then the tip of another cigarette glowed in the dark. So Nurse Ratchet was still craving nicotine – really, the weakness of some addicts. Maybe she’d stay out there long enough to finish….

After a few seconds, the woman decided that all was well. The uniform vanished out of Diana’s line of sight, and the cigarette tip waved back and forth amid the smoke.

She didn’t waste any more time. She dropped the recorder into her bag, slipped her sandals on, and unlocked and ran out the front door as if the hounds of hell were biting at her ankles. Down the steps, into the parking lot… damn, where
had
Laura screeched the Mercedes to a halt?
(The brakes are probably shot, thanks again, little sister, leave to drive, why don’t you?)
She fumbled for the keys and clicked the remote, and the lights of her car flashed on.

Ten seconds, and she was turning the key in the ignition, just as the nurse came running out onto her front doorstep. Diana didn’t spare her a glance as she roared out of the parking lot.

Another minute, and the Mercedes blended smoothly into the highway traffic. Diana glanced in the rear-view mirror, but there was no one following her. No one! She was free. She heard herself laughing in delight, an unfamiliar, long-lost sound.

Delight. She hadn’t felt that in a long, long time.

She headed up towards the interstate. By now, the woman was probably phoning the agency, and the agency would burn up the lines notifying Richard that his errant wife had slipped the leash. And, bloody hell, how had he found out, anyway? She had specifically told Laura that she didn’t want him to know.