Dark Homecoming (19 page)

At that moment, David stepped up, slipping his arm around Liz's waist.

“Well, Roger,” he said, “quite the show you put on.”

“I'm pleased you came, David.”

“And just as I feared, I'm cornered about business wherever I go.” He nodded in Paul Delacorte's direction. “You'll understand if we duck out.”

“That's why I decided not to go the corporate route all those years ago,” Roger replied. “Seems you're never off the clock.”

“Given the money you raked in here tonight, I'd say you made a wise choice,” David said. “Sorry you can't make our dinner party.”

Liz looked up at him. So David already knew that Roger wouldn't be coming.

“I'm still hopeful you can change your appointment and come,” Liz said. “I'll see to it that we leave a place open for you. Show up even at the last minute if you'd like.”

She saw the frown that slipped across David's face at her words.

“You are too kind, sister-in-law. But that would throw off Mrs. Hoffman's seating plans, I'm sure.”

Liz snorted. “If Mrs. Hoffman thinks she's organizing my dinner party, she's got another thing coming.”

“Come on, Liz,” David said, nudging her forward. “It's time we went home.”

“Thank you both again for coming,” Roger said.

“Congratulations again on such a successful show,” Liz told him.

He smiled. Liz and David made their way through the crowd. When Liz turned around just before they left the gallery, she saw Roger still standing where they'd left him across the room, still looking after her.

V
ariola had known this moment would come, sooner or later. They were alone in the house. No one could hear them. From across the marble floor of the parlor, Mrs. Hoffman stared at her. Variola stared right back. They were like two cats, glaring at each other in that fraught moment before each pounced.

“You are getting lax,” Mrs. Hoffman said at last.

Variola laughed. “Me? You accuse
me
of being lax?”

“We can't have what happened the other day happen again.”

“That was
your
failing, not mine.”

Mrs. Hoffman's eyes radiated anger, even if the muscles of her face did not move. “You have responsibilities, and you have not been vigilant.”

“I have done my best to keep doors from opening. I conduct the ritual of enclosure every morning. But it is not I who oversees the locks on the doors.”

“She is getting stronger.”

Variola nodded. “Yes, she is.”

“That unnerves you.”

“I have done what I can. But at a certain point, you will have to accept that she is not coming back.”

“I will
never
accept that,” Hoffman hissed, her anger threatening to explode out of her plastic face. At that very moment, a vase on a shelf fell and shattered to the floor. Neither woman paid any attention to it.

“I don't care if you ever accept it. But you will have to accept the fact that responsibilities are shifting in this house, even as we speak.” She smiled. “Your allegiances may have to change.”

“Never.”

Variola laughed—that rich, deep, musical sound. “You've been afraid of me ever since I came here.”

“If I was once, I no longer am.”

“You have learned your lessons well. I will give you that.”

A tight smile suggested itself on Hoffman's face. “All but one. Papa Ghede does not bestow power to his followers for use in cruelty or revenge. If that is your motivation, then there will be a price to pay.”

“I do not follow Papa Ghede,” Hoffman said. “I am not some vodou priestess from the islands.”

Variola frowned at the insult, and a second vase went flying from the shelf, hurtling across the room before smashing into smithereens on the floor. Once again, neither woman reacted.

“You brought me here to form a community,” Variola said bitterly. “I was to teach you . . .”

“You were brought here to teach us, yes, but the coven was ours.”

Variola made a face in disgust. “Coven,” she spit. “That was your word. Not mine.”

“She was our leader,” Hoffman said. “And she will be again.”

Variola laughed in derision. “You poor deluded creature.”

Mrs. Hoffman folded her arms across her chest. “You think I'd ever swear allegiance to you? That I'd ever recognize you as leader of our coven?”

“I believe there will be others who will do so. Others who are not as foolish or as deluded as you are to think she can ever be brought back.”

“I'm not threatened by your alliances with chambermaids.”

Variola smiled. “But Mrs. Hoffman. I've decided to embrace the new mistress of the house. She has expressed an interest in the fine arts of the islands.”

It was Mrs. Hoffman's turn to laugh. “I am even less threatened by
her
.”

“You have repudiated all I taught you!” Variola shouted, angry all of a sudden. Every single glass object in the parlor—every vase, every figurine, every ashtray—suddenly went flying around the room. Mrs. Hoffman had to duck to avoid being hit, though she did so with only the slightest alarm. “You have corrupted my faith! Papa Ghede will not stand for it!”

“You agreed, Variola,” Hoffman seethed. “You promised to bring her back! You were paid very well to bring her back!”

“I kept my promise,” Variola said, her voice a low growl.

“At what cost?” Mrs. Hoffman demanded, her eyes suddenly filled with emotion. It looked as if the plastic mask might crack.

“The cost you insisted on,” Variola told her softly. “What we have today is all because of you.”

“But I have been taking steps to correct it, to make things better,” the housekeeper said, even as she waved a hand around her. The shattered glass nearest to her reassembled as if in reverse motion and returned to the shelves. “I have been doing what I could to bring her back even as you have sat idle.”

“I have done all I can to bring her back,” Variola said, waving her own hand now. The remaining shattered glass was quickly and efficiently restored.

“There must be more that you can do,” Mrs. Hoffman said. “Or I will have to continue doing things my way.”

“Your ways don't work,” Variola told her. “There must be no pain . . .”

“Then step up and do what you were asked to do,” Hoffman replied. “What you promised to do that terrible day of the accident.”

Variola was silent. The two women resumed staring at each other without speaking any words. Memories of the year past thrummed between them.

This time it was Variola who broke the silence. “And what about Mr. Huntington? He is a wild card, you know. Will he do as you say?”

“He has no choice, does he?” Hoffman replied.

Variola sighed.

Mrs. Hoffman turned, walking stiffly out of the parlor and up the stairs. Variola sighed once more, turning herself and returning to the kitchen, chanting a prayer to Papa Ghede under her breath.

“M
om, don't hang up the phone,” Liz said.

She'd been trying to reach her mother for weeks, but Mom would never return Liz's calls or emails. Every time Liz called, she always ended up getting Mom's voice mail. Apparently, when she saw it was Liz calling, Mom wouldn't pick up the phone. Finally, this morning, Liz had had enough: she blocked her number when she called, so her mother wouldn't know it was her. And, sure enough, Mom picked up on the first ring.

“Why would I hang up on you?” she asked Liz.

“Because you clearly have been avoiding me.”

“You're paranoid, Liz.”

“You never even called to congratulate me after the wedding!”

“Congratulate you? After you ran off and got married to some guy I'd never even met?”

“Mom, we've been over this. We were on the ship—it was spontaneous—romantic—”

She heard her mother sniff. “Spontaneous! Romantic! More like impulsive and foolhardy. Liz, you barely know this man you've made your husband.”

“I know him very well,” she replied, even if, down deep, she still worried sometimes that she didn't know David all that well. Despite how wonderful things had been between them lately, Liz hadn't forgotten how he'd abandoned her and left her here to deal with all that unpleasantness on her own. She'd forgiven him, and she felt pretty certain he regretted his behavior—but Mom's words just raised her doubts all over again, although she'd never give her mother the satisfaction of knowing that.

“Besides,” Mom was saying, “you denied me the chance to plan a wedding for you. You denied your sister and brother the chance to be a part of your big day.”

“That's what I'm calling for, Mom. I want you and Deanne and George to come visit. We're having a dinner party next week—it's a big deal, David's pulling out all the stops. His parents are coming, too.”

Her mother harrumphed. “We can't afford to fly down to Florida for a dinner party.”

“Mom, David's going to fly you down. It's time you met him. He wants so much to meet you.”

There was silence on the other end of the phone.

“Mom?” Liz asked. “Are you there?”

“I'm here.”

“He's got his assistant working on the tickets now. I was thinking, the day after the party, we could maybe drive down to Miami—or would you rather go to Orlando, maybe take in Disney World? You know how much Deanne and I always wanted to go there as kids.”

“Right, and I could never afford to take you.”

“Well, now we can go!”

“Sorry, Liz, but we have a prior engagement next week.”

“What?”

“You can't just call us up after ignoring us for weeks and tell us your rich husband wants to jet us around and take us places. Sorry, Liz. We're not at your beck and call. Maybe your houseful of servants, but not us.”

“Mom, you're being unreasonable. Put Deanne on the phone . . .”

“She's out. And I have to be somewhere, too. Thanks for the invite, Liz, but I'm afraid it came a little too late.”

Mom hung up the phone.

Liz was steaming mad. She was about to call her sister—Deanne would be very happy to come, she was sure—but then she took a deep breath. She knew how sensitive her mother was. She'd raised them on her own, struggling to overcome her own problems. Maybe Liz had touched a nerve calling her this way. She could feel her anger subsiding as she remembered how Mom had fought so hard to get sober, and how abandoned and alone she'd felt when Liz took the job on the cruise line. Liz was still hurt by David's abandonment of her—but hadn't she abandoned her mother in the same way?

The old tape loop of guilt started playing in her head again. Down deep, Liz believed that everything that went wrong in her life was ultimately her fault.

She knew who could shake her out of that sort of thinking. She hit Nicki's name in her contacts on her phone.

“Hey, this is Nicki,” her voice mail announced. “I'm back on dry land, so leave your message and I will get back to you.”

“Hey,” Liz said after the beep. “Are you in Atlantic City? Have you started the new job? Hope things are going well. Call me when you get this. I just want to vent a little bit about my mother.” She drew out the two syllables in the word
mother
. “Oh, and David is back home and everything is great and happy and wonderful again. Call me. Love you.”

Great and happy and wonderful. Liz stood there at the window, her phone in her hand, looking out over the topiary. In the distance she could spy a bit of the sculpture garden—the wings of that hideous cow-angel. Great and happy and wonderful.

That was really how things were—weren't they?

Standing there, she caught a whiff of gardenia. She told herself she must be imagining it.

“H
ow does such a handsome, obviously successful man as yourself end up sitting at a bar like this one, all alone on a Saturday night?”

The blond woman sitting next to him with the tattoo of a star on her neck lifted her martini glass in a sort of toast.

Roger clinked his glass with hers. “Well, truth is, I was invited to a gala dinner party tonight, but I had to decline.”

“Because you'd rather sit here, drowning yourself in gin?” She winked at him. “I've been counting. That's your third.”

“Fourth,” Roger corrected her. “I had one at my gallery, before I came over here.”

“You hold your liquor well.” She looked him over. “Gallery? What kind of gallery?”

“An art gallery. Uptown.”

The woman snickered. “I don't really understand art.”

“That's all right,” Roger said, taking a sip of his martini. “I don't really either.”

The bar was a dive, wedged between a check-cashing business and a boarded-up building with signs posted declaring it had been condemned by the city. The bar smelled of beer and urine, and the lights were low. The countertop was sticky.

“You come here often?” the woman asked.

Roger sighed. “My first time. I needed to go somewhere where no one knew me. Where I could, as you say, drown myself in gin.”

“Well, my name is Lana, and now, someone knows ya.”

They clinked glasses again.

“So,” Lana said, “what's her name?”

“Excuse me?” Roger asked.

“Her name. The woman you're drowning yourself over. The woman you'd rather be with tonight, instead of here, in this dive.”

Roger looked down at his glass. “You're a smart girl,” he said.

“Not really. Just wise to the ways of men.” She took a drink. “You haven't told me your name.”

“Roger,” he said quietly.

He looked over at her. She was pretty enough. Blond, blue-eyed. The star tattoo on her neck suggested she was a bit of a free spirit. She wasn't all that young, but she wasn't old either, despite the lines around her eyes and her mouth. She was a smoker, Roger suspected. But there was a vitality to her that intrigued him.

Lana smiled. “How about if we finish our drinks and go take a swim? My apartment isn't far from here, and we have a nice pool.”

“I don't have a bathing suit with me.”

She winked. “You won't need one.”

He downed the last of his gin.