Good Intentions (28 page)

Philip’s white Jaguar was in his parking spot when Renee pulled her white Mercedes in beside it. She walked briskly through the lot, then through the lobby, greeting the obviously disinterested doorman with perhaps a touch too much enthusiasm. She rode the elevator up to the sixth floor and found herself almost skipping down the lushly carpeted hall, then she pushed the key into the lock and opened the door. “Philip … Kathryn … anybody home?”

She heard familiar noises and realized it was the sound of the shower in her bathroom. What the hell, she thought, feeling reckless. Should she take off her clothes and join Philip in his midday ablutions? What was the old saying from the sixties? Save water—shower with a friend?

Philip would be surprised to see her. He had claimed several times that she lacked spontaneity. Perhaps he would be sufficiently stirred by her leaving work early and joining him in the shower that he might find time for a little love in the afternoon. It definitely beat arguing with Mrs. DeFlores’s attorney.

“Renee?” A thin voice from another room. “Is that you?”

Renee followed the hollow sound to the guest bedroom. Kathryn was sitting up in bed, her blond hair disheveled, her green eyes clearly frightened, the white sheet pulled up tightly to just beneath her chin. Renee walked quickly to the side of her bed. “Kathryn, what’s the matter? Are you all right? You look awful.”

“I don’t feel very well.”

Renee reached for her sister’s forehead and was surprised when Kathryn jerked quickly out of her reach, surprised also when she realized that underneath the sheet, Kathryn was nude.

“I don’t have a fever.”

“Maybe not, but look at you. You’re perspiring. Maybe you need a doctor.”

“It’s just a little touch of flu,” Kathryn protested, tears starting to form. “I’ve been trying to get some sleep.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Did I wake you?”

“No, it’s all right.”

Renee sat down on the bed beside her sister. Something in the air caught her attention momentarily but it disappeared before she had a chance to identify it. “Have you had anything to eat?”

Kathryn started to respond but froze at the sound of Philip’s voice.

“What say we go out and grab an ice-cream cone?” he was saying as he approached the door, his hips wrapped in a familiar white towel, shaking his wet hair dry with a few careless tosses of his head. Renee’s eyes shot from her sister, whose skin had turned whiter than the sheet with which she was protecting herself, to Philip, who was as imposing as ever despite the fact he was barely dressed. “Well, what do you say?” he continued without missing a beat. “I heard you come in and thought you might feel like a nice, cold ice cream.” He looked toward Kathryn as if seeing her for the first time. “Hi, Kathryn. I didn’t know you were home.”

“I’m not feeling very well,” Kathryn whispered. “I must have fallen asleep. I didn’t hear you come in.”

“Patient canceled, so I decided to come home early and relax, take a shower. It’s hot out there today.” He turned his attention back to Renee. “Well, what do you say? Feel like going out with your husband for a giant double-scoop ice cream in a chocolate waffle cone?”

Renee’s face relaxed into a wide grin. “Sounds great.”

“How about you, Kathryn?”

Kathryn shook her head. She looked like she was about to throw up.

“Kathryn probably shouldn’t have any solid foods. I think the best thing you could do, Kathy, would be to just stay in bed and try to get some more sleep. I can make you some tea and toast, if you’d like …”

“No, nothing.”

“We won’t be long.”

Kathryn nodded.

Renee stood up, drawing the blanket that lay crumpled around Kathryn’s feet up over her shoulders. “You probably should put something on. You don’t want to catch a chill.” She leaned over to kiss Kathryn on the cheek, but Kathryn turned her head, burying her chin against her shoulder, and Renee’s lips brushed against some stray wisps of her sister’s hair instead. “You’ll be all right,” she said, wondering why the words sounded so hollow. Then she put her hand in Philip’s and walked from the room.

I
n Lynn’s dream, she was in Marc’s apartment. They were in the middle bedroom, the one reserved for his sons’ visits. The snake slept in its glass tank, and every now and then Lynn cast a wary eye in its direction.

“I know,” Marc said, moving toward her. “You like things that jump.”

In the next instant, they were on the larger bed in his room and he was removing her clothes. She felt his hands as they moved slowly up and down her body. She felt his beard brushing against the sides of her mouth. She sat up suddenly. “Let’s play a game.”

“I don’t play games,” he told her.

“I spy with my little eye,” she said anyway, “something that is red.”

“There’s nothing in this room that’s red. Everything’s brown.”

“I spy something that is red.”

“But there’s nothing red.”

“Do you give up? Give up? Give up?”

The childish refrain turned into the ringing of a telephone. Because it was a dream, Lynn knew who was
calling even before she answered it. It was her children announcing that they were alone in the house and that a strange man was trying to get in. “Lock the doors,” she told them, running down the street toward her house. But her house wasn’t where it was supposed to be. In its place was a small dance studio. Lynn raced to a phone booth which materialized at the corner.

“Mommy, help us,” Megan cried. “The man is coming. He’s getting in.”

“Run,” Lynn urged helplessly, not knowing where to find them.

“Where can we go?”

“Go to my half of the house,” Lynn instructed, her voice rising. “He can’t touch you as long as you’re in my half of the house.”

“Which half is yours?” the child asked.

Lynn looked up and down the deserted street for answers that refused to come. “I don’t know,” she said finally, seeing the shadow of the man as he reached for her children. “I don’t know which half is mine.”

Lynn opened her eyes with a start.

Megan and Nicholas were standing over her bed. “Happy birthday, Mommy,” they chimed, almost, but not quite, in unison. Lynn reached up gratefully and encircled both children in her arms.

“Careful,” Megan warned, backing gingerly away.

“What have you got there?”

Megan proudly displayed a small round cake covered with white icing and a row of delicate yellow flowers. Lynn scanned the words written across its top. “H.B. Mommy?” she asked.

“The lady in the store said there wasn’t enough room
to write Happy Birthday. Is this okay? She said you’d like it just the same.”

“I love it,” Lynn said truthfully, trying not to laugh. “When did you get it?”

“Yesterday. Mrs. Hart took us to the store before you got back from work.” Mrs. Hart was the woman who lived a few doors away and who babysat whenever Lynn was going to be late. “She said to keep the cake in the refrigerator overnight but I didn’t because I didn’t want you to see it. I wanted to surprise you.”

“We
wanted to surprise you,” Nicholas interjected testily. “It’s not just from you. It’s from me too.”

“I paid for it,” Megan told him haughtily.

“So? It was my idea.”

“It was not.”

“Children,” Lynn said steadily, “it’s a lovely cake and it was a lovely idea. It doesn’t matter who paid for it or whose idea it was.”

“It was mine,” said Nicholas.

“Mine,” insisted Megan.

“Where
did
you keep the cake?” Lynn asked warily.

“Under my bed.”

“All night?”

“Is that okay?” Megan’s eyes filled with fear.

“It’s fine,” Lynn said quickly. “I’m sure it will be delicious.”

“Can we have some now?”

“For breakfast?”

“Yea,” Nicholas shouted. “Cake for breakfast.”

Lynn looked at the faces of her two beautiful children. If she had done nothing else right in forty years—my God, forty years—she had at least managed to produce
two beautiful, healthy children. Please, God, she thought, don’t let him take them away from me. “Oh, sure. Cake for breakfast. Why not?”

“I’ll cut it,” Megan exclaimed, running from the room.

“I’ll
cut it,” Nicholas shouted after her.

“I’ll
cut it,” Lynn told them, though she doubted that either of them heard. She followed them into the kitchen, where Megan had already deposited the cake in the middle of the table and was reaching for a knife.
“I’ll
cut it,” Lynn repeated.

“Why can’t I do it?” Megan asked.

“All right,” Lynn said, surprising herself. “You do it. Just be careful.”

Megan beamed.

“Daddy’s going to have a fit when he hears we had cake for breakfast,” Nicholas said, laughing.

Lynn shuddered, feeling the shadowy figure from her dream return to surround the house. “You’re cutting too big a piece, Megan.”

Nicholas reached across the table and scooped up the enormous piece of cake. “First taste,” he cried, stuffing it into his mouth.

“You’re such a baby,” Megan said.

“Okay, kids, we don’t have time to fight. You still have to get dressed for camp and I have to get ready for work.”

“You shouldn’t have to work on your birthday,” Nicholas pronounced, his mouth covered with white cake crumbs. “How old are you, Mommy?”

“She’s forty,” Megan answered, then looked at her mother with great concern. “How old was your mother when she died?”

“Sixty-two,” Lynn told her, feeling strange, as she always did on her birthday, that the woman who had given birth to her was no longer here to help her celebrate. The look on Megan’s face went from concern to dismay as she did the appropriate mathematics in her head. “I’ll be around for a while yet,” Lynn assured her quickly.

“What if something happens to you?”

“Nothing’s going to happen to me.”

“But what if something does? What if you’re in an accident?”

“I won’t be.”

“But if you are. What happens to us if you get killed in a car crash or something?”

“I’m not going to get killed in any car crash,” Lynn said with the certitude of someone who has the power to see into the future. “But if I do,” she continued when she saw that Megan was unimpressed by her omniscience, “then you’ll still have your father. He’ll take care of you.” Lynn forced these words out of her mouth with great difficulty, growing desperate for a cup of coffee. “But that’s not going to happen.” The phone rang. “I want a smaller piece of cake than that, please,” Lynn told her daughter as she reached for the receiver. “Hello?”

Lynn thought at first that the woman’s voice on the other end of the line belonged to her father’s wife, Barbara, and that she was calling to assure Lynn that today was the first day of the rest of her life, so she was surprised when birthday congratulations were not forthcoming.

“You better get over here right now,” the voice warned.

“What? Who is this?”

“They’re getting away.”

“I’m sorry, I think you have the wrong number.”

“Lynn Schuster?”

“Yes, this is Lynn Schuster. Who is this?” A blurred picture was beginning to develop in Lynn’s mind.

“The Fosters are leaving town. The moving van is in front of their place right now.”

“What?”

The line went dead. Lynn replaced the receiver slowly. The blurred photograph snapped into sharp focus, exposing Davia Messenger, the Fosters’ anxious neighbor, her geometric red hair accentuating the hawklike features of her face.

“Mom, is everything all right?”

Lynn said nothing. Where could the Fosters be going? What could she do to stop them?

“Are you going to have to leave?” Megan asked anxiously.

“Not till I’ve had my birthday cake,” Lynn told her, watching her daughter’s relieved grin spread across her face. “I love you,” Lynn said, hugging her two children close against her, her thoughts with little Ashleigh Foster. “I can’t begin to tell you how much I love you.”

“We love you too,” Megan said.

“Can I have another piece of cake?” asked Nicholas.

“As soon as the kids left for camp, I drove out there,” Lynn was explaining to her supervisor. Carl McVee, a short, balding man, whose unfashionably long sideburns only accentuated his baldness, sat behind his desk, leaning on his elbows, his lips in an unattractive pout. “The house was empty. The moving van had already left. The Fosters,
of course, were long gone. I called the moving van company. They wouldn’t give me any information, but it’s a local outfit. They don’t travel out of state. So we know that the Fosters are still in Florida. I called Keith Foster’s office. They said he’d transferred to another city, but they wouldn’t tell me which one. I checked the locations of Data Base International. Their main office is in Sarasota, so that must be where they’ve gone. I called Stephen Hendrix, the Fosters’ attorney …”

“I know.”

“You know?”

“He called here immediately after he got off the phone with you.”

“Then you know he was most uncooperative.” Lynn decided she didn’t like the way her boss was looking at her.

“On the contrary, I found Mr. Hendrix to be very cooperative indeed. He’s agreed not to sue our office for harassment on the condition that …”

“What?!”

“On the condition that you leave his client alone.”

“His client is a potentially dangerous man.”

“His client is a very
important
potentially dangerous man. There’s a big difference.”

“You’re telling me we do nothing?”

“Lynn, be reasonable. We
have
nothing.”

“We have plenty. We have the testimony of a next-door neighbor …”

“A crazy lady who even you admitted in your report would not make a very impressive witness in court.”

“We have Ashleigh’s teacher, a Miss Harriet Templeton. I finally managed to get hold of her and she
confirmed that Ashleigh didn’t break her arm in any schoolyard accident.”

“That doesn’t prove Keith Foster did it.”

“It proves he lied.” Lynn paced angrily back and forth in front of McVee’s desk. “I also managed to track down Keith Foster’s second wife.”

“Aren’t you the great detective!”