All Who Are Lost (Ashmore's Folly Book 1) (75 page)

I looked around the room I had worked on so carefully. I saw the walls I had painted, the crown moldings I had installed, the furniture I had rescued and made lovely and comfortable. I had worked so hard on this house, and for all my effort, I had failed to make a home. I had failed to make a family.

Without any hurry, I walked over to the hall mirror and took stock. I was mussed up – his hands had made short work of my hair earlier, there on the sofa. My lips still had that kissed look to them; my cheeks were bright red. And – I was imagining things – I saw a couple of tight lines down around my mouth.

I rubbed at a small crease and deliberately relaxed my mouth until the line faded into nothingness. Then I went back to his desk, picked up his unfinished glass of Merlot, and upended it in his briefcase.

I went to my bedroom and pulled the bag of weed from underneath the bras in my lingerie drawer. I found the three-quarters full bottle of Jack Daniels that I had stashed under the bed. I helped myself to a couple of lines from the bag in my jewelry case. Then I picked up my shoulder bag and my keys. I was not going to spend the night in my lonely bed, not tonight.

Still no Richard downstairs. I went over to his desk to survey the damage and saw, to my satisfaction, that the Merlot had soaked into the leather and completely ruined the contents. The bruise on his face would heal, but this damage was permanent – like the damage he’d done to me the weekend of the Valentine’s Day dance, like the damage I’d done a month later at the clinic. Like the damage that had started the day I’d lied to him, told him I’d been with Daddy, told him that Julie was not his child.

God, what a relief it is, to finally say it. I can’t even keep my lies straight anymore. I’m surprised I ever could.

The truth is a lot easier.

I remember standing there, looking down at his ruined briefcase, listening for – what? Did I hope that he would come out, confront me once again? But he wouldn’t. Richard had gone too far, and I suspected maliciously that he was confronting himself about that right then. I suspected that he had shaken himself down to his sinless soul.

I’d finally smashed his face in. I wished I found it more satisfying.

The Merlot had soaked into a pack of cigarettes in the briefcase. I picked the pack up, shook off the excess drops, and dropped it and his engraved lighter into my shoulder bag. I’d given him that lighter for Christmas the year before. Well, I was taking it back. I was taking everything back.

I went out through the kitchen through the utility room, and opened the door to the garage. I was just opening the door to my car when I looked across, and I saw the room on the other side of the garage, the room that would have made such a perfect music room for me, the room that he had taken over for his stupid model airplanes.

In the years we’d been back in Williamsburg, he had never asked me if I missed my piano.

I went into the room. I hadn’t been in there in years; I usually passed by without a second thought as I brought groceries in the house. But now I entered, and I looked. Where I would have hung delicate, feminine artwork, he had tacked schematics. When I would have placed flower arrangements, he had put workbenches that held model airplanes in all stages of construction. A laptop computer sat open on the nearest workbench, its screen dark. And, in the middle of the room, where my piano should have been, stood a doll house.

Except that it wasn’t a doll house. It was a model of the remodeled Folly that opened from the front – very clever – and showed the interior that he had designed. I looked at it, and around it, and in it. It was very grand – more than we could afford, but perhaps Philip was going to dispense money from the Great Lakes shipping trust. The whole house wrapped around a great room that opened up three stories. It had rooms labeled
dining room
,
kitchen
,
Julie’s room
,
master suite
,
nursery
.

Nothing for
Diana’s room
.

I wasn’t to occupy that master suite. I wasn’t to help fill that nursery.

He must have been working on this at night. He must not be able to sleep any more than I could.

I don’t know how long I stared at it.

Then I saw a toolkit lying beside the model, the toolkit that he had used to assemble this little masterpiece.

I picked up a hammer.

I smashed the computer screen. I smashed every one of the model airplanes, from the little biplane that he had built as a flight-dazzled six-year-old to the five-foot wing he was currently constructing. And then I smashed the model to bits. That took the longest, and made the most noise, and brought him out to the garage just as I had reduced it to rubble.

I threw the hammer to the ground and walked past him as he stood there, frozen in shock.

~•~

I don’t know what I intended when I left Ashmore Park, but I was on a high. I felt alive again; I felt more like Diana than I had felt in years.

I drove over to Virginia Beach because it was sufficiently far away from Williamsburg that I wouldn’t see anyone I knew. I found a club, thought it was too tame, and found another. This time, I had a blast.

I was twenty-five years old, in my prime, and I’d never looked better in my life. I met a lot of men willing to buy me drinks. I met even more who asked me outside to roll a few and lie on the beach and sink into the oblivion of the night. I found one who gave me what I hadn’t known with my husband for six long years… that surfeit of sensation and relaxation that came with a really good orgasm.

What happened, and how many times it happened, I don’t really know. I was stoned and drunk, and I did not care.

~•~

I sobered up on Sunday afternoon, and I went home to confront my destiny.

My head ached, and I felt drained, and I was busy counting days because I suspected, uneasily, that I’d had a lot of sex at the wrong time of the month. (That, of course, being the reason I’d picked then to make my approach to Richard.)

I tried to unlock the front door, and my keys didn’t work. I scarcely had time to work it out in my head – he’d changed the locks – when who should open the door, but Mr. Perfect himself.

“You’re not coming in, Diana,” he said, and came outside, closing the door behind him. He had one hell of a bruise and stitches on his face where I’d cut him.

I had no idea what to say to him. I had no idea where to start apologizing for my appalling behavior, and I couldn’t believe he’d actually locked me out of my own home.

At least, he hadn’t thrown all my stuff out on the lawn.

As it turned out, I didn’t have to worry about apologizing.

Where the hell have you been….

Back at your old game again, I see….

My God, Diana, you reek of sex….

The most miserable excuse for a mother I’ve ever seen….

You’re a menace to Julie and a menace to yourself….

Someday you’re going to wrap yourself around a tree….

You don’t live here anymore….

I really didn’t want to fight, I hadn’t the energy, but I was damned if he was going to accuse me after what he’d done. And what he had manifestly refused to do.

So I ripped back at him.

You never talk to me….

What am I supposed to do with myself all day….

I’m going crazy here….

I worked damned hard on this house, what do you mean, I don’t live here anymore….

How dare you call me a bad mother….

You self-righteous bastard, you don’t know the first thing about forgiveness….

You won’t make love to me, I’m too young to give that up….

One moment there, when I said that, I saw something flash through his eyes, a startled recognition that we both felt the same horror at our actions, the same hunger for each other, but then it died, and we never had another chance.

He said slowly, “Who was he?”

“I don’t know,” I said wearily, “I don’t think he told me his name.”

A long, long silence.

“Next time,” said Richard politely, with that terrible courtesy, “get his name. I’m not accepting paternity for any more bastards you accumulate.”

That shocked me down to my toes. “Is that what you think of Julie?”

“No,” he said, “Julie’s mine. I made her mine. But I don’t have it in me to do it again, Diana.”

I counted again fast in my mind, felt a little better about my numbers this time, and my mouth, totally disconnected from my brain, said, “Fine. You don’t have to. I’m going home to Daddy.”

Another long, dreadful silence.

And then—

“How very convenient,” said my husband, and packed my car in record time.

I spent Sunday night back in my old bed, back under Daddy’s roof, where Richard and I had made love when we and the world were young.

Daddy, flying home from another tour, was ecstatic to have me home again, and started talking about training my voice again.

I felt relieved to be away from Richard’s presence (although I did miss Julie). I’d been released from the prison of marriage, and I was determined never to go back, not even if he broke down and begged.

Richard, it turned out, had no intention of begging.

Two weeks after he threw me out, he sued me for permanent custody of Julie.

~•~

I cried for days.

Then I got tired of crying, and I stewed.

Then I got mad.

Then I got a lawyer.

You want war, Mr. Perfect?

Fine.

War
.

Chapter 24: Eyes Only

ENTER USER NAME:

CDSB

Enter password:

Aural13Gem$

~•~

Meg St. Bride knew all about computers.

Her earliest memory was of cuddling against her dad while he programmed around her. He didn’t like people coming in to disturb him while he worked, but he hadn’t minded her, as long as she didn’t talk his ear off. She’d climb up on his lap, or he’d lift her up, and she’d snuggle against his chest and watch him writing
open loop
and
end case
.

Even before she could read, she was playing games on the computer. Later, he’d shown her how to download music (
Don’t tell your mother
) and how to burn her own CDs.

She’d been only six when he presented her with her own laptop. Of course, he had put every parental restriction possible on it, and her Internet time was strictly monitored, and she wasn’t ever supposed to IM with anyone she didn’t know personally, blah, blah, blah….

She didn’t mind the restrictions, at least not for a few years. She’d really liked having a bond with her father that no one else in the family shared. He’d taught her some basic programming (
Hello, world!
), and he’d shown her some of the cooler things a daring hacker could get away with in cyberspace.

With the caveat, of course:
Don’t get caught.
And then, mindful that he was her father and was supposed to set a good example:
In fact, don’t do it at all.

Wink, wink.

~•~

She’d been his star student. So, to reward her, every year he had upgraded her to a new laptop for Christmas.

But not the Christmas
after
.

Not ever again.

So now her laptop, bought for her that last Christmas, the last good Christmas ever, was hopelessly obsolete. Slow, slow, slow… fit for the junkyard, really.

She didn’t want to ask her mother. The less anyone or anything reminded Laura of
the day
, the better. She didn’t want to bring on one of those headaches that made her mother’s eyes go dark with grief and drained the color from her face.

Not that
the day
ever strayed far from her mother’s thought. Or hers.

She’d nearly asked right before her mother left on that cross-country trip to see her family. Laura had been so worried, so full of guilt about leaving her, that she could have played on that guilt and asked for anything, with a high probability of success.

But she hadn’t.

Because, two nights before Laura left, Mark had brought home a familiar briefcase. The briefcase that Cameron St. Bride had handed to his corporate counsel before he waved away that last elevator. The briefcase that had made it down all those flights of stairs and out of the tower to safety.

The briefcase holding her father’s laptop.

One of the last things he had ever touched.

Do you want it?
Mark had asked her mother, and Laura, pale, with those tightened eyes, had shaken her head.

I do! I do!

But Meg had absorbed more from her father than world-class hacking skills. She had learned to bide her time, to watch, to wait for the opportune moment. So she said nothing after her mother left for Virginia. She left the briefcase languish, seemingly forgotten, for another week, in the corner of Mark’s office. Then one evening, she surprised her uncle with some fresh-baked cookies while he worked on financials, and, on her way out to the family room to watch some TV, she adopted an off-handed tone. “Hey, Mark, can I use that?”

“Use what?” He sounded irritated.

Meg swallowed and bit her lip, and said nothing.

Predictably, her uncle looked up and noticed her distress. “What’s wrong?”

“Well, it’s just – Dad—” and she swallowed again. Okay, no point in being
too
obvious. “He used to – you know – upgrade me, for Christmas, you know—”

Mark came over to her, numbers momentarily forgotten. She felt his arm go around her shoulders, and he looked at her with concern that she knew she didn’t deserve.

His voice was reassuring, comforting. “I’ll have one of the IT guys get it ready for you. Can you wait a couple of days?”

Meg nodded. True to his word, Mark took the laptop to St. Bride Data to get it backed up and scoured of all business data and any –
inappropriate
files that his brother might have left on the hard drive that his daughter shouldn’t view.