Deceptions (47 page)

He was smiling at her when she opened her eyes. Her mouth formed a silent Oh and she smiled up at him. 'My

love—' she began, when a knock came at the door and a hearty voice bellowed that room service had arrived.

Garth leaped from the bed. 'Dunce,' he muttered. 'If he's so energetic at three in the morning, why isn't he serenading us with Italian love songs? Do you know what? I forgot to pack a robe.'

He looked at Sabrina, sitting cross-legged on the bed, her face radiant, laughing at him. 'Here,' she said, holding out the quilt and as he made a toga from it he began to laugh with her, and their laughter filled the room.

Nothing was settled, but everything was changed. Sabrina sat beside an airplane window looking at a landscape of towering clouds as she had only twenty-four hours earlier and knew that the game was over. She would have to leave today. She had had her moment of love, and from now on everything in her life would be different because of it; but no matter how she relived the past twenty-four hours, they were not hers; they were Stephanie's.

What had begun in mid-September as a careless lark had grown by the end of October to a complex web of passion and need and commitment to a shared future. Which was impossible for Garth and Sabrina, but essential for Garth and his wife. And even if Sabrina had wanted to forget that, she could not. Because Garth's wife was the other half of herself.

Beside her. Garth shook his head as a stewardess offered him a magazine, and leaned back in his seat. 'It's hard to believe how much has happened since your trip.'

She clasped her hands in her lap and turned to him, letting herself look fully at him in the brilliant sunlight above the clouds, memorizing the tiny lines that radiated froip the comers of his dark eyes, his strong cheekbones and wide mouth, the cleft in his chin, the gray hairs mixed with black at his forehead.

'A turning point,' he mused. 'Did you know it would be? Or did you just run away and then later realize it might be the first step of the final step out the door? I think that was it. And then you came back, trying in so many ways to be

different, as if you were determined to remake our marriage, forcing me to see what happened to us. I've wanted for some time to tell you how grateful I am, though you must know. I want you to understand that I'm aware of what you've done, how hard it is to change, how hard you've tried. And you were the one to do it. I didn't know how. I didn't even know what had to be done.'

He took her hand. That was some of what I was trying to tell you last night. I suppose you knew most of it already. What I'm saying now is that I won't let you slip away again. You've taught me - Stephanie, what is it? What's wrong?'

She bent her head. 'I don't know. I'm so dizzy, all of a sudden. Could you get me a cup of tea?'

He rang for the stewardess, and Sabrina put her head back against the seat. Thank you.* Her voice was shaking; her body was shaking. What's wrong with me? she thought wildly. It's not Garth, it's something else. Something is wrong, something terrible, and I don't know what it is.

Reaching across to pull down the tray in front of her. Garth felt the violent trembling of her body. 'Good God, what is it? Stephanie, my love, what can I do—?'

'I don't know,' she whispered, and buried her face in his shoulder. Garth put his arms around her, holding her tightly until the stewardess came with a pot of tea.

'Is there anything I can do?' she asked. 'A blanket— V

'I don't think so,' Garth said. Gently, he disengaged himself. 'Stephanie, can you manage some tea?'

She nodded and took the cup in both hands, sipping the scalding liquid.

Garth looked at his watch. 'Eleven-thirty; we'll be landing in half an hour. Penny and Cliff will be at the airport, you know, with Vivian.'

'Yes. Just give me a few minutes.'

Shivering, Sabrina drank the hot tea. As Garth refilled her cup, she saw through the window a plane, in the far distance, traveling in the opposite direction. Yesterday I was on that plane, she thought. Talking about shadows.

She forced herself to think of Garth and what he had been saying when the dizziness began. She understood now why he had not seen through the deception. Garth the trained scientist, the astute observer, who had been married to the same woman for twelve years, had not guessed he was living with his wife's twin sister because he convinced himself she was deliberately changing her behavior to save their marriage. If she and Stephanie had written a scenario to protect them, they could not have found a better one. How clever we were, she thought through her despair. And look where it got us.

She had to leave. Today. And that meant calling Stephanie, telling her to catch the first plane - but Stephanie wasn't there. Stephanie was on Max's yacht. Until Friday or Saturday.

/ can't stay that long. I can't do that to any of us.

But I can't just disappear, either.

She closed her eyes. She would have to stay a few more days. Stephanie would call as soon as she got back to Cadogan Square, and on Monday they would meet at the aiport in Chicago and reverse the procedure they had gone through so lightheartedly in China: exchange clothes and purses, hand over a wedding ring, trade keys to their front doors. And it would be over.

It will be over. The words rang in her head. They echoed through the excited greetings of Penny and Cliff at the airport; echoed through the sounds of the house - a door slamming. Cliff dropping a tray of cookies and Penny shouting at him to clean up the mess, Garth walking from room to room talking of storm windows; echoed through the sizzling of the steaks Sabrina cooked for dinner, the burbling of the coffeepot, the tales that Penny and Cliff took turns relating: a stray cat, a school contest, plans for a Thanksgiving parade.

It will be over echoed through the rattling of dishes as the children cleaned the kitchen, echoed through the ringing of the telephone, echoed through Garth's words calling her to say that it was long distance; someone named Brooks Westermarck wanted to speak to her.

And then the echo stopped as Brooks's voice, from the

other side of the ocean, began heavily, 'Mrs Andersen ... Stephanie ... * and went on, crying, to tell her they had just heard the news that Max Stuyvesant's yacht had exploded and gone down in the Mediterranean about eleven-thirty Chicago time. Everyone on board, including her sister. Lady Sabrina Longworth, had been killed.

Van III

Chapter 17

The mourners came early to Kensington Cemetery. Some wept and others murmured together as they stood near the open grave. Sabrina heard them behind her, like rustling leaves, but she did not turn around; she was watching her sister's coffin, her own coffin, settle into the grave as the Vicar gave a short prayer and began to speak.

'Lady Sabrina Longworth, vivid with hfe, brought us love and joy—'

Heavy, pale clouds hung low over the earth and grass, draining their color, leaving them gray beneath the supplicating branches of bare trees. A light October mist drifted from the Thames, touching the mourners with chill fingers. Sabrina was numb, but still she shivered, and Garth tightened his arm around her shoulders.

'She was young and beautiful and awake to the beauty around her—'

In the circle of Garth's arm, Sabrina was very still, but a scream clawed in her throat. Stephanie.

'In the midst of life we are in death.*

Stephanie was dead.

She was cold, so cold, and her skin hurt, stretched across her bones: a thin, taut membrane holding in her pain and the invisible tears that would not stop, even when she slept.

Come back, Stephanie. We'll go back to the beginning, we'll do it all differently, and everything will be all right.

'The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want... '

But the only beginning she could think of was the phone call from Brooks, the beginning of the nightmare. His voice had come across the ocean, crying, and as he talked the room darkened around Sabrina, receded to a small pinpoint of light, then surged back* crushing her. She could not breathe.

The crash of the falling telephone brought Garth and the children running; she remembered Penny and Qiff, fearful and still, watching, as Garth cradled her and with his other hand picked up the telephone to talk to Brooks, his voice level, making arrangements* He was the steady center of that crazily spinning room, a whirlpool that would have sucked her down if Garth had not held her. She clung to him. Garth, my love—

But he didn't know,'he didn't know what had happened. 'Wait.' She struggled to pull away from him. 'It wasn't Sabrina. It wasn't Sabrina. It wasn't Sabrina who died.'

'Sssh, dear love, just hold me; you don't have to face it yet.' *But it wasn't Sabrina, it wasn't Sabrina—' And then the tears came, wrenching sobs that drowned her words while she struggled to tell them. 'Not... Sabrina ... who died.' Until Nat came, with a hypodermic needle. 'No! Let me cry! Don't take that away from me, from both of us—!'

But the needle slid smoothly into her arm and slowly, shudderingly, she calmed, dimly hearing Nat's voice as she fell asleep. 'My God, my God, what a dreadful thing. Garth, what else can I do?'

Thursday was a blur of faces and voices. The telephone rang steadily. Doors opened and closed; people brought flowers and food. Why was everyone so busy when Stephanie was dead?

Garth took care of everything. He had called her parents; she heard him calling Brooks again. ' ... register the death at the American consulate in Marseilles and fly the body—'

Not 'the body,' you fools, its Stephanie!

•—back to England ... at the undertaker's - yes, give me the address. TX Dryden and Sons, Regent Street, May-fair—'

Near home: Stephanie will be near home.

' —^leaving this afternoon; we'll see you tomorrow morning, Friday ... of course, at Sabrina's house; that's where Stephanie will want to be.'

Home. I'm going home.

She let Garth do everything. He drove the children to Vivian's house, packed for both of them and held her close

when they reached the airport and walked through the echoing concourse to their plane.

Garth is the center of my world, she thought; all I have left. She tried to shake off her lethargy. I have to tell him; he still doesn't know. I'll tell him as soon as we settle down. Brooks just called; I can wait a few minutes until we're ... no. Brooks called - when? -1 can't remember. Yesterday? A few minutes ago?

On the plane, Garth took the magazines the stewardess offered, giving Sabrina her privacy. She pushed back her seat and closed her eyes, trying to think, to go back to the beginning, while waves of sleepiness swept over her.

If 1 hadn't traded places, she thought, drifting in and out of sleep. Or broken my wrist. Then everything would be all right. Or if I'd insisted we end the deception then, tell the truth, instead of letting it go on. Or later, if I'd refused to give Stephanie another week, so she could have her cruise and I could stay a little longer with Garth.

If I hadn't fallen in love with Garth.

/ caused my sistefs death.

She was awake for the rest of the flight, her face turned from Garth. Everything I did led to her death. But I didn't know —

At the airport, she insisted on going straight to the undertaker's. 'I want to see my sister. I have to see my sister.'

She went in alone, to the small room at the back of T C Dryden and Sons, and knelt beside the coffin. 'Stephanie?'

Her sister slept, cold and remote, her beauty as fragile as parchment. Sabrina watched over her, at last going back to the beginning, all the way back - the cities where they had grown up, schools and rented houses, chauffeured limousines and servants, the sleek figures of Gordon and Laura leaving them alone, the two of them, alone, making their own family.

She remembered one summer vacation when they were seven or eight. She and Stephanie had run off to find a waterfall, and Stephanie had slipped on some rocks and broken her ankle. Sabrina had raced back to find Gordon and Laura, and while Gordon worked to free Stephanie's ankle

from the rocks, Sabrina had gripped her hand, to help ease the pain. That night, in bed, Stephanie had said drowsily, 'We'll always help each other, won't we? Whenever we're hurt or lost, we'll always be there.'

'Yes,' Sabrina said.

'Promise.'

'I promise.'

'I promise, too,' Stephanie had said.

In T C Diyden's silent shadowed room, lit by candles and small lamps, heavy with the fragrance of tall bouquets of flowers, Sabrina watched her sister. 'We promised, Stephanie. We promised.'

She was crying, the tears cold on her cheeks, and she rested her forehead on the polished wood of the cofQn. 'I love you, Stephanie. I never meant to hurt you. It didn't seem important - one more week. I wanted to love your family for a few more days and you could have your... one last fling

She closed her ey^. 'It's all my fault, and now I'm left alone to tell them. We didn't plan that; we were so careless, we never thought we might have to tell anyone, and now I don't know how to do it, or how I'll bear all their anger. I did try to tell them, but no one listened and I have no one to talk to about it. All these last weeks, when I didn't have anyone in Evanston, it didn't matter because I had you and we understood each other. But now ... Stephanie, there is no one who will understand/

Sabrina reached out to smooth her sister's hair and a gleam of gold caught her eye - the wedding band she wore, glinting against the dark strands. Swiftly she pulled it off. 'This is yours, Stephanie. I have no right to it.' She slipped it on Stephanie's finger, her warm hand holding her sister's marble one. 'It's always been yours. If I'd remembered that, you would have come home sooner and none of this—'

She clasped her hands in her lap, thinking. If I'd remembered that, I would have told everyone the truth by now. I never had any right to this family. And I have to tell them that. Alone. Without Stephanie's help when they turn their anger on me. Alone. I'd better get used to it.

She leaned forward again to say goodbye to her sister. She