Fire in the Wind (33 page)

She broke off, because that thought made the tears stronger so that they threatened to choke her.

"They announced the engagement at a big New Year's Eve party. Everyone was there, and everyone was so happy for us, said it was so right. And Larry was—so happy and laughing. He'd pleased everyone at once, even himself. He always wanted to please.

"That was the night I wrote you, when I knew it was too late to ask you any more. Mrs. Standish surprised us by saying the wedding would be in two weeks, and I knew I couldn't do it myself, stop the preparations, kill everyone's happiness, and it was only for six months and I could make him happy before he died."

"But he didn't die."

He still had his back to her, unmoving, and his voice sounded hoarse and strained, breaking into the flow of her memory.

"No, he didn't die." Vanessa took a deep breath, feeling as though it was the first oxygen she'd had since she began this story. "He—he didn't have cancer of the spinal column after all. He had a disease called neurofibromatosis. It's a different kind of disease, it causes a slow breakdown....We didn't find out about it till two years later, and that's when Larry learned his mother had had the cancer diagnosis two years before but that we'd all kept it from him.

"That's when he understood why I had refused to leave college, had insisted on working after we were married. And why I refused to have a baby. He wanted children, but I—I'd kept saying no.

"He knew then why I'd married him." Vanessa bowed her head and felt the tears come rushing down her cheeks. "He—he looked at me as if he hated me. He said if I'd left him alone he might have found a woman who really loved him, who'd have wanted his baby even though he was going to die—
because
he was going to die.

"I offered to have a baby then. There was no telling then how long he would live, how long it would be before he became physically disabled. He could have had a child and watched it grow. But he refused. He—he made sure I couldn't. He said I'd already given up too much for him. After that he never asked me to quit work. He knew why I wouldn't want to live on Standish money afterwards, why I had to have a career. He was very understanding after that. He never complained when... it got bad.

"But his soul was gone. He hated his mother, and if he didn't hate me, he—he despised himself for loving me. I knew he wanted to make me leave him, but he couldn't make himself do it. He needed me. And that... destroyed him. He despised himself.

"At the end he needed me more than ever. He forgot what he knew about why I'd married him. He'd never known about you. He never knew what I'd given up. If he'd known he
would
have made me leave him, but I never told him. I knew it was too late for you and me; I'd known that when you didn't answer my letter."

She was crying openly now, her head bowed, her hair hiding her face. But Jake wasn't looking at her. He was still there, staring out the window at the mountains. Vanessa swallowed and breathed deeply to calm herself.

She said, "I just wanted you to know," and got up and walked to the door and slipped from the room. Imprinted on her mind was the sight of the tall still figure by the window, unrelenting, unforgiving, and she thought she would carry that image to her grave.

* * *

There was a letter from Lou Standish on the mat when she got home, a friendly, brotherly letter asking how she was and if she needed any help, legal or otherwise. Vanessa felt a pang of guilt, realizing that she hadn't once written the Standish family since leaving New York.

But now her heart rebelled against the instinctive feeling of guilt, and what she felt was,
they had me for ten years, but now I belong to me.
She missed other friends in New York, but oddly, she never consciously missed the Standishes. Perhaps, when she put her life right—
if
she put her life right—it might be safe for her to speak to Daniella Standish again.

She put the letter away. In any case, she couldn't answer it this weekend. She would be too busy this weekend.

She would be busy waiting for Jake to call, or to come. When he had absorbed what she had told him, he would have to begin to forgive. And if he could forgive her, then he must stop hating her.

Then, perhaps, she could start again with him. She had no real competition: the only women she had ever seen him with or heard him mention were Marigold and Louisa Hayward, and they were no competition. Louisa was the sort of woman a man kept around because there would be no danger of becoming involved with her in any way other than sexually, and judging by what Jake had said about diamond bracelets, Marigold was the same.

Her worst enemy was her own past. It might take him a while to absorb what she had told him, till he could see her again clearly, without all those bitter memories clouding his vision. But he had to do it, he had to.

Somewhere inside her Vanessa knew that if there was going to be any hope for her, Jake would, in some way, come to her this weekend. Even if only to ask her a question or to rail at her for her submissive stupidity.

She must be here when he reached for her, because Jake Conrad wasn't the sort of man to reach a second time.

There was plenty to keep her busy inside for a weekend. Vanessa pottered and cleaned and polished, and painted the bathroom a lighter, because dark rooms depressed her.

Her confident anticipation peaked late Saturday afternoon and began a slow decline. By Sunday afternoon she had lost hope.

He was not going to come to her.

* * *

Monday morning she was late leaving the house for work, and the mail had arrived by the time she got downstairs.

There was an official-looking letter from a development company: her former landlord had sold the property and her rent was now payable to the new owners. From October first, would she please make her cheques payable to Conrad Property Development Limited and send them to the above address?

Blackness pressed in on Vanessa for a moment and she clutched the wall for support: Conrad Property Development was a name she had seen many times on Concorp letterhead. It was part of Conrad Corporation.

Jake had not forgiven her, hadn't come to terms with what she had told him. He was still out for revenge, and she felt the net of his power drawing tighter and tighter around her.

* * *

At five past one on an October afternoon Vanessa walked off the elevator at the floor that held the Concorp executive offices, said an unremarkable hello to one or two people and moved straight to Jean's unoccupied post outside Jake's office.

Glancing around with a little flutter of fear, she moved with outward assurance to tap on Jake's office door. If he were inside she would say she was looking for Jean; but there was no one inside. Vanessa slipped silently in and shut the door, then glanced around the room to be sure there was no one lurking in the corners. Then she moved to the desk, pulled open the right-hand lower drawer she had seen him take the file from.

There were a number of file folders, all neatly inside green hanging files; her eye was drawn immediately to the only one with a blank label. Her heart beating wildly, Vanessa pulled out the buff folder and dropped it on the desk.

The first item was the photostat of the management contract. She shut the drawer with a bang, pushed the file into her leather design portfolio and crossed to the door in a space of seconds. In another few seconds she was in the elevator; minutes later she was in the street. She took a deep shuddering breath and hugged the portfolio case tightly under her arm.

Every way she turned, she was fighting for her life.

* * *

Vanessa pulled the sitting-room draperies against the twilight and closed the door. She felt threatened and insecure, like a criminal who doesn't know whether or not the police are chasing him.

Her portfolio case lay beside her on the couch, and Vanessa was as frightened of it as if it did contain the snake of her dream.

She suddenly desperately wanted a cup of coffee, but she pushed the need impatiently aside, recognizing it as her mind's delaying tactic. She didn't want to know what it was that Jake had thought so important; she would have liked nothing better than to bury her head and forget it.

But it was more than business ruin that threatened her: if Jake drove Number 24 into bankruptcy she would be forced to leave the country, for all the reasons he had mentioned.

Leaving the country meant not getting another chance with Jake. Her happiness now hinged on whether she could make Number 24 a success. She had only one tiny slim chance with Jake now: that time would heal.

She could buy time with Number 24. Vanessa zipped open the portfolio and reached through sheaves of sketches of the summer line down to the thick file deep inside. Please, God, let it be something she could fight!

He had copies not only of her management contract but also of the debenture agreement and the lease of the premises at Number 24. Vanessa turned them all over. There was nothing to be gained from reading them again, though she might take them to David and see if he could find some other danger she wasn't aware of or some loophole that would save her....

Next came the letter that had been written by Conrad Corporation to the Canadian consulate in New York, asking that she be granted an immediate temporary visa in Canada. Almost unconsciously she noted the date: June twenty-fifth. She had been granted her six-month temporary visa on June twenty-ninth. Within about two months she would have to fly down to Seattle to apply for a permanent one.

Vanessa bit her lip. Time was so short. She did not believe that Jake meant to let her go on and build Number 24 into a real success before he destroyed her. He had the power to do it at any time. Why would he wait?

I'll write my own letter from Number 24,
she resolved now.
Or I'll get Robert to write it. And I'll go down to Seattle this month, before Jake expects me to go....

A copy of the letter she had received on Monday, informing her that the apartment she lived in and loved so much now belonged to Jake... but that could not be his trump card, once she knew about it. Had the dream been wrong? She laughed a little, feeling foolish. Since when had her dreams been oracles?

A list of names and addresses, many of them looking Chinese, all in Vancouver. Vanessa wrinkled her forehead in perplexity. None of the names meant a thing to her. She couldn't recall ever having heard them before. She turned the page. On the next sheet were only two names and addresses: Ronnie Pardeh and Mrs. V. Spears, both in Vancouver.

These names seemed familiar, but where...? Vanessa's eyes flew open in startled surprise. Of course! Ronnie and Mrs. Spears were the sub-contractors who did outside work for Number 24! Then what were the other names? The home sewers they used?

What on earth was this?

Vanessa's heart was beating now in loud urgent thumps as she turned to the next sheet of paper. It was covered with typing. At the top of the page a line of capitals read, "TRANSCRIPT OF A CONVERSATION WITH MRS. WAN CHU...."

A hand seemed to close on her throat, cutting off breath. Vanessa shut her eyes for a moment, not wanting to read. But she had to read, and she forced her eyes open and onto the page: "I make lining for inside skirt... they bring me pieces all cut out, I sew here, and here, then I turn this like this... I start work eight o'clock, I work to late, very late at night, sometimes ten-twelve hour a day... that's right, that's right, about forty cent an hour... I can't get other work. I got children at home, I no speak good English... I don't tell anybody I work like this, they find out they take away welfare money...."

There were four statements in all, and they all said much the same thing. One woman had her three children help her with the pinning and folding and counting. One still had not paid for the sewing machine she had bought on time in order to get the work, and the money she earned wasn't enough to cover the monthly payments on the machine. All the women were supplementing either welfare money or income from part-time work that wasn't sufficient to live on.

Doggedly Vanessa read the statements through and turned the last page. Underneath were several photostated pages that seemed to be an excerpt from the federal statute governing minimum wage in Canada.

After that there was only one more page, and it was almost blank. First there was a woman's name, and then, "c/o the fifth estate," with a post-office-box number in Toronto.

The name meant nothing to her, although after the impact of what she had just read Vanessa felt wooden, as though her brain were hardly functioning. And what was the fifth estate? The fourth estate she thought was journalism, but she always forgot what the first three were—the clergy, the nobility and... the law, perhaps? Or was government in there somewhere?

She had never heard of a fifth estate. Vanessa looked at the printed letters on the page. They were beginning to swim before her eyes. Maybe it was a secret society, like the Freemasons or the Rosicrucians. Maybe they were putting vengeful curses on her every night in a secret ritual, at the behest of Brother Jake Conrad.

Or maybe this was a secret pipeline to the government for anonymous tip-offs about lawbreakers. She could imagine thousands of dirty little white envelopes, and inside each the scrawled name of someone who wasn't paying his or her fair share of income tax—and on one of them her own name, but her name wouldn't be scrawled, it would be written in Jake Conrad's sharp clear handwriting, and underneath, "Violating federal wage statutes."