Beloved (43 page)

Jane
'
s lament was interrupted by the sound of her own voice: a quiet, almost petulant moan came from the sleeping figure on videotape. Both women jerked their heads toward the camcorder in time to see the recorded Jane frown s
li
ghtly in concentration and then shift her position on the pillow. Jane ran to the recorder and rewound a few feet of the tape, then pressed the
"
Play
"
button.

They watched in silence as the
li
ttle gesture repeated itself.
"
See anything?
"
whispered Jane as the tape continued to roll.

"
Doesn
'
t it look maybe a
li
ttle fuzzy above your head?
"
Jane didn
'
t think so. Cissy said,
"
Maybe Judith got scared off by the camcorder.
"

"
She wouldn
'
t know what it was,
"
Jane answered, as if they were having a perfectly reasonable conversation.

They let the tape play on while they talked and drank coffee and ate pancakes in the pleasant, sun-filled room.
Finally Jane stood up and said gently,
"
This isn
'
t going anywhere, Cissy.
If Judith had been here, I would have known.
"
She stopped the tape.

But Cissy, showing an amazing amount of grit for a dilettante, refused to give up.
"
I
'
ll take the second tape and play it on the player in my room,
"
she said.
"
If I see something, I
'
ll run right over.
"

The girl hesitated, then put her arms around Jane in a shy hug. In her ruffle-edged nightgown, with her hair lying straight and unstyled, Cissy looked and acted
li
ke a teenager; she could
'
ve been Jane
'
s much younger sister. Touched by Cissy
'
s timid
li
ttle gesture of affection, Jane gave her a big, reassuring hug back.

She
'
s never had any women close to her,
Jane suddenly rea
li
zed.
Only men.

But that was more than Jane had.

C
issy never came back with her evidence, and when Jane walked out to go to town the next morning, she saw that Cissy
'
s Jeep was gone. Nine chances out of ten Phillip was back and snapping his fingers. It bothered Jane that the girl had fallen so completely under his spell. Not that there was anything wrong with spells, but Phillip was far too jaded for Cissy
'
s sweet innocence. They were a tricky combination as a couple.

Jane held up the pale yellow sleeve of her sweater against the peeling clapboard of the cottage and speculated about that shade of paint. Too yellow for
Nantucket
? Was white the best? She sighed, pleasantly obsessed by the homeowner
'
s ultimate dilemma
—
just
what color to paint the house
—
and realized again how good life could be on
Nantucket
year round. True, she hadn
'
t been tested through an entire long and empty winter; but she knew instinctively that she
'
d fit in. Books, a crackling fire
—
no ghosts
—
and
a man
who truly loved her; that was the formula for making it through the cruel months.

Too bad I can
'
t get the formula quite right,
she thought wistfully.
I have one ghost too many and one man too few.
She paused and listened to herself. This fretting over ghosts was new, obviously. But so was this fretting about not having a mate. After all, Jane was the one who
'
d always been comfortable about being single. Her friends used to be very impressed by her cool independence
—
the same friends who were now all married with children.

Jane Drew
—
having second thoughts?

Oh, what the
heck.
Chalk it up to spring.

Besides, her love life wasn
'
t
completely
without hope at the moment. Sooner or later Bing would be, if ever so briefly, back on
Nantucket
. She laughed a resigned little laugh and struck out on foot for
Cliff Road
and the town center, pausing every little while to admire the yellow forsythia still in bloom, or to stick her nose in the sweet waxy flowers drooping from the branches of an Andromeda bordering the road.

Jane was still ambling along when she heard someone behind her. She turned to see Mac McKenzie coming up fast. It caught her unaware; he seemed to appear out of nowhere. He was wearing town clothes and walking with long, powerful strides, completely in his element on this stretch of near-country road. She couldn
'
t help remembering him as he was at Phillip Harrow
'
s dinner party, when he
'
d seemed so hemmed in by Phillip
'
s fine antiques and crystal.

At the time she thought he was shy, or possibly just plain sullen. Now she saw that he
'
d been biding his time all evening like some cornered lion, waiting to leap over their gentility and savor his freedom again. He couldn
'
t survive for long in the drawing room, not without hurting himself or someone else. He needed this
—
the land, the sky, the ocean
—
the way Jane
'
s mother needed theater and the opera.

As he drew nearer to her, Jane saw a look on his face that she
'
d never seen before, a mix of contentment and anticipation. He looked far younger than his forty years.
Of course!
she realized.
He feels it even more than I, this surge of spring. His whole life has oriented him to this season. He doesn
'
t just
witness
the miracle of rebirth. He lives it; he
'
s part of it.
She could see it in his eyes, in his bearing, in the ruggedly handsome lines of his face.

And it took her breath away.

She stopped and waited for him.
"
Good morning,
"
she said rather shyly, aware that their last exchange had been a typically caustic one. She wished, quite suddenly, that she could erase her memory of it. It was too perfect a day to go on sniping at one another
—
and anyway, she was wearing a skirt. Skirts made her feel feminine and winsome and not like fighting.

Mac picked up right away on the fact that she wasn
'
t in jeans and a sweatshirt. His gaze swept over her skirt, her lemon yellow sweater, her pinned-back auburn hair.
"
You finally get a job?
"
he quipped as he fell in alongside her. But there was an appreciative softness in his voice that was new, and it made her heart beat faster.

"
Nothing so radical as that,
"
she said lightly, suddenly hoping against hope that it would matter to him.
"
It just feels good to dress up a little now and then.
"

Mac slipped his hands in the pockets of his corduroys and slowed his pace to match hers.
"
Well, you
'
ll be wearing power suits soon enough, back in
Connecticut
,
"
he said without looking at her.

For Mac it was a pretty blatant feeler, and it showed: a dark telltale flush began creeping up his neck.

"
All my plans are on hold right now,
"
she confessed, giving him the information he seemed to be after.
"
I may never get off the island. Someone
'
s living in my condo, my mother
'
s taking my car, and no one wants to buy Lilac Cottage.
"

"
No one? That
'
s hard to believe; you
'
re doing a good job with that house,
"
Mac said.
"
I
'
m glad to see you
'
re not tarting it up.
"

She savored the compliment, such as it was, before she disillusioned him.
"
Yeah, but you weren
't there when Phil
lip
'
s first buyer went through.
'
Rough as a corncob
'
was all he said. The second one said even less
—
he just paced it off, muttered
'
No land,
'
and left.
"

Mac laughed under his breath and said,
"
That
'
s the oldest one in the books: Send over a couple of so-called buyers to bad-mouth the property and drive down your hopes.
"

"
What
'
re you talking about?
"
she asked, at a loss.
"
Why would Phillip do that?
"

"
Obviously, because he wants to buy your property himself,
"
Mac said in a voice that was suddenly low and grim and bitter.

"W
hat? Phillip isn
'
t interested in Lilac! I had to force him just to take a polite look around. He doesn
'
t want
any
more property on the island, Mac. He
'
s told Cissy that he thanks his lucky stars he didn
'
t get stuck with Bing
'
s place. I assume Phillip has a cash-flow problem just like everyone else.
"

"
Naturally you continue to defend him,
"
Mac said as they walked side by side. The more annoyed he got, the faster he walked. The faster he walked, the more annoyed Jane became.

She decided that Mac was too biased ever to be fair to Phillip.
"
Mac, I know all about what happened when you and Phillip were in high school,
"
she blurted.
"
I can see why you don
'
t trust the man. But give me a little credit, won
'
t you? I work with all kinds of people
—
"

"
And I don
'
t, you mean?
"
he shot back.
"
I spend the day swinging from the tree limbs I
'
m paid to saw off?
"

She flushed, then halted and retreated in the face of his anger.
"
Okay, I agree, Phillip
'
s not the best. But that doesn
'
t mean he goes around twirling his mustache and plotting evil all day long,
"
she said stubbornly.

There they were, standing in the middle of
Cliff Road
, exchanging blows again. And meanwhile the sun was just as warm and bright and the daffodils were just as beguiling. Heartsick that they were destroying a perfectly magical walk, Jane sighed and said,
"
Why do we always do this? Why do we always fight?
"
She fell back to walking, but her heart wasn
'
t in it.

"
Wait!
"
Mac said, reaching out for her arm. Electrified, she stopped and turned, and he released her. His look was intense, determined.
"
We fight because we can
'
t communicate. Then we get frustrated. Then we get mad. Isn
'
t it obvious?
"

"
Not to me it isn
'
t,
"
she said, still burning from his touch.
"
This has never happened to me before. People in advertising don
'
t usually have problems communicating.
"