Maidenstone Lighthouse (23 page)

I stared at it, wondering who on earth would be calling me here at this time of night, especially when I was having so much trouble catching my breath.

The phone rang again.

I slowly lifted a leaden hand to reach for the receiver, intending to firmly but politely tell whoever it was that I did not need any magazine subscriptions this evening, thank you very much.

I saw my hand pause in midair as the whole room started slowly revolving in perfect time with the huge lighthouse beacon.

The phone rang, again and again. Gasping for air, I stubbornly willed my hand to continue its slow journey toward the irritating instrument.

“Don't answer that, Sue.”

I rolled my eyes upward and saw Bobby standing over me, his face deathly pale.

“Kowalski is coming…to rescue me in his…helicopter,” I gasped, no longer afraid.

Bobby coughed and nodded. “Yes, I know,” he said. “I heard you talking with him.” Then he moved away, out of my field of vision.

I frowned, trying to recall something that I knew about Bobby, something very important. But it was too hard, because I had to keep remembering to breathe. So I sighed deeply and stared down at my bloody arm instead. “God, that really…hurts,” I moaned, looking around to see where Bobby had gone.

I saw him standing by a small metal-framed door set between two large panes of rain-streaked glass. He opened the door and a blast of icy wind roared into the small room. He briefly stuck his head outside, then beckoned to me.

“What?” I asked. Bobby's lips were forming words that I could not hear above the shrieking wind. Leaving the door standing open, he walked back to my side and bent to shout into my ear.

“The helicopter is here, Sue. It's waiting for you.”

I smiled and tried to stand, but my legs felt faraway and oddly disconnected from my body. Bobby obligingly put a hand under my elbow and boosted me to my feet. Then, with his arm around my waist, he slowly walked me to the door.

I squinted out at the narrow catwalk and the howling void that lay beyond. “No!” I whispered, attempting to pull back. “I'm afraid.”

Bobby wordlessly pushed me through the door, at the same moment releasing his grip on me. I lurched forward, falling to my knees against the slender safety railing. Far below I saw the familiar outline of my Volvo. Its headlights were burning brightly, illuminating the rows of giant rolling breakers that were thundering onto the black shiny rocks at the base of the lighthouse.

The sight of the car instantly brought me back to my senses. I swiveled my head around just in time to see Bobby advancing on me, his mouth twisted into an evil smile. “It will be much easier for me this way, Sue,” he shouted as he grabbed the collar of my jacket and attempted to hoist me over the railing.

The myth about your entire life passing before your eyes in the final moment before death is just that, a myth. At least it was for me.

Because what flashed before my eyes in that moment, as Bobby struggled to tip my helpless body over the edge of the catwalk atop the Maidenstone Light was a crystalline image of Laura in her tastefully decorated Park Avenue office.

Sitting in her Italian leather chair, her long legs enticingly crossed in the direction of a grim-faced investigator, my fashionable shrink was clucking her pretty pink tongue and saying that the suicide of Manhattan antiques appraiser Susan Marks, while surely lamentable, did not surprise her even one little bit.

After all, Laura went on, poor, demented Susan had been acutely depressed, emotionally distraught and had of late been experiencing increasingly vivid hallucinations in which she was always reunited with her dead lover.

I cannot tell you how badly that pissed me off.

Huffing and puffing like an asthmatic in a dust storm, Bobby finally had the upper half of my body bent over the railing. He turned me around to face him, then grabbed hold of my legs and was in the process of tipping me over backward.

“Oh, my God!” I croaked, staring wide-eyed at the incredible sight just beyond his shoulder.

Startled, Bobby looked back and his flushed features turned instantly the color of dead ashes.

For floating above him, her white gown billowing softly about her slender form, was Aimee Marks. Bobby dropped me. I fell heavily onto the catwalk as my gentle spirit opened her mouth and emitted an ear-shattering scream that drove him backward with the force of a sledgehammer blow.

Bobby's icy-blue eyes rolled toward me, pleading for some explanation, as he was catapulted sharply backward and disappeared into the darkness below.

Then Aimee smiled at me and she, too, was gone.

As my eyes fluttered closed Dan's face floated above me. I felt myself smile before everything went black.

I
opened my eyes as a handsome young paramedic deftly slipped a needle into my good arm. He smiled, telling me it wouldn't feel any worse than a bee sting.

I couldn't seem to talk so I didn't tell him that I'm allergic to bee stings. I felt like I was at the bottom of a swirling whirlpool and wondered why I was thinking about bee stings.

My arm felt detached, like it wasn't really connected to my shoulder, but my fingers moved when I wiggled them. Your arm has to be attached to move your fingers, right? So why was it twice its normal size? And white? The idea that I had been wrapped in bandages entered my muddled brain and I heaved a sigh of relief.

Whatever the nice young man had put in the needle was making it difficult for me to keep my eyes open and as I closed them I once again saw Dan's sweet, concerned face. Why was he concerned? I felt fine.

Blessed sleep swept over me as the clattering Coast Guard helicopter lifted off Maidenstone Island.

 

The hospital room at Boston Medical was cold, stark and quiet. No beeps, clicks and whirrs like the ones that had filled Damon's room.

What day was it? How long had I been here?

My arm was heavy and I could move it only at the shoulder. A plaster splint kept it immobile from above my elbow all the way to my fingertips. Why was it in a cast? Had Bobby broken it?

Bobby! The horror of it all came back to me. My mind reeled at what had happened. I'd been coming to the realization that he hadn't been my knight in shining armor but I never imagined him capable of murder. Thank God for Aimee.

I no longer had anything to fear, but the anger and humiliation of having been so wrong about him made tears well in my eyes. Feeling sorry for myself, I suppose. I really did feel like an idiot.

Miss Romantic reminded me that the same thing had happened to Aimee. “Yeah,” I countered, “but she was a sweet, young girl, sheltered and naive, as were all daughters of wealthy Edwardian men.” Making it easy for her to be swayed and seduced by a handsome rogue. What was my excuse?

I considered myself an educated businesswoman, to some extent experienced in the ways of the world, yet I had been just as easily duped by a handsome stranger. And like Aimee had been given fair warning by friends—i.e., Damon—but had blithely refused to take heed. Just as Aimee had ignored her parents' warnings. And we'd almost come to the same end.

I sighed, saying again,
Thank God for Aimee.
I only hoped that Bobby's fall over the icy railing of the Maidenstone Lighthouse could take the place of Ned Bingham's aborted plunge and allow Aimee to move on into the Light.

A strange noise made me open my eyes and I tried to sit up but got too dizzy, collapsing back onto the bed. From my slightly elevated position I looked around the room in an effort to discover the source of the noise; that's when I saw Dan asleep in a green vinyl club chair. He looked tired and uncomfortable. The two-or three-day beard told me he'd been waiting for me to wake up. My heart swelled with the love I'd been suppressing, I couldn't help but smile.

I watched him sleep for a while, then called his name. My voice was scratchy and almost a whisper but his eyes popped open and in a single smooth motion he was sitting on the edge of the bed, my hand in his.

“How do you feel?”

“Not too badly, all things considered. How long have I been here?”

“Two days.”

I could see he was restraining himself, afraid he might hurt me. I reached up and placed my hand on his cheek, brushing away a tear with my thumb. He couldn't seem to help himself and leaned down, gathering me in his arms. I felt the warmth of his tears on my neck and held him as best I could with my one good arm.

“I was afraid I'd lost you,” he sobbed as he released me and sat up.

“You can't get rid of me that easily,” I said as chirpily as possible.

His eyes flashed. “It's not funny, Susan, you almost died. The doctors said the cold was the only thing that kept you from bleeding to death.” He paused and more quietly added, “On the helicopter it was touch and go.”

I was sure that seeing his face had been a delusional vision brought on by my injuries. “You were on the helicopter?”

He dropped his eyes in embarrassment or pain, I couldn't tell. “I carried you down from the lighthouse to the chopper.” He almost whispered, “I saw Aimee.”

I reached out and took his hand. “It's over now, for Aimee and me.”

He looked up and smiled; it was a heartbreaking smile that made the breath in my chest catch. I realized in that instant that I truly loved this man.

Our emotional reunion had drained what little energy I had and after getting multiple assurances that Damon was doing well, since Dan unequivocally refused to take me to him, I fell asleep.

I finally realized that I'd never really loved Bobby at all. As Damon had insisted, I had been in love with the idea of being in love. I had tried desperately to turn it into the real thing but had failed miserably.

Dreaming of Dan, I was glad.

 

He returned a few hours later, having showered and shaved, his arms filled with flowers, magazines, books and a stuffed pelican. I'd never seen a stuffed pelican before but it was very cute and Dan said it reminded him of home…our home. He put the flowers in my water pitcher, the magazines and books on the bedside table, and gave the pelican to me with a kiss. Then he said he had a surprise for me and left.

Within moments he wheeled a chair into the room with a boisterous Damon. Dan had convinced Alice Cahill that a meeting would be good for both of us and promised her faithfully to not let us overdo it.

I burst into tears when I saw my best friend's bruised and battered body, and the look on his face made it clear that I wasn't in much better shape. Dan pushed the wheelchair next to the bed and gave me a quick kiss, then stepped back, allowing Damon and me our time together.

I wanted to jump up and throw my arms around him but got dizzy when I sat up; with all the hardware in his legs he couldn't stand. So we had to content ourselves with holding hands and crying for each other.

When his tears were fianlly dry, Damon admonished, “You just can't do anything the easy way, can you?”

In spite of the pain, I laughed. “I'm not sure you're the one to be throwing stones.”

On we went without missing a beat as though the last few days had never happened.

But they had and we all had our stories to tell.

 

Damon started by relating to us that he'd seen Bobby on the sidewalk in front of my apartment building and although they didn't speak Bobby knew he'd been found out and had bolted. But Damon had seen a look in his eyes that made him afraid for me. He didn't know why but was compelled to get to me when the phone service proved inadequate.

Dan pulled his chair closer to the bed to hear all the sordid details of my own encounter with my vengeful ex-lover. They were both awestruck and fearful for me by turns. Quiet throughout the telling and sorry that they hadn't been there to help me. I guess I was stronger than I'd ever imagined possible.

But now I was anxious to find out why I had seen Dan's face as I drifted in and out of consciousness.

Turned out, he had walked back to my house when his car had run out of gas, thanks to Bobby. He had arrived just as my Volvo was pulling out of the driveway, being driven by a man Dan had never seen. Terrified that I was inside the house lying injured he rushed inside and searched from the kitchen to the attic and back down. Unable to find me he ran back out into the raging storm.

After finding the carriage house open he ran after the Volvo, realizing that I must have left on the moped, and since I hadn't passed him on the street he assumed I'd gone to Maidenstone Island and followed both of us there.

Lashing wind and surf slowed him down as he ran across the causeway leading to the lighthouse. He found the steel door to the tower open and blood pooled in the entry, where I'd stopped to gain my bearings. He ran up the metal stairs unheard through the sound of the wind buffeting the building.

He reached us just as Bobby went over the railing. He saw Aimee as she watched Bobby land on the painted rocks below. She turned and smiled at me and then at Dan, before fading away into the mist that shrouded the lighthouse.

Dan rushed to my side, which was the first time I remember seeing his face and, cradling me against his chest, he carried me down the steep, winding steps to the waiting helicopter.

And now here we all were, weary but alive and well and together.

I was starting to fade and Dan could see it; he stood up, taking my hand and Damon's hand in his own, he smiled. “Okay, you two, that's enough. You both need rest.” He leaned down and kissed my forehead, then took hold of Damon's wheelchair.

“I'm taking you back to your room now so you can continue to make life miserable for Alice Cahill.”

Damon looked up at Dan and smiled like a cat who had just eaten a canary, then looked at me and in a stage whisper said, “Don't throw this one back, girl. He's a keeper.”

Then, as Dan started to pull the chair away, Damon reached out and patted my hand. “I love you, you know.”

“The feeling is mutual.”

I watched as my men left the room. Sighing, I drifted off to sleep.