Sweet Valley Confidential: Ten Years Later (27 page)

I look at them, Todd and Jessica, like he tells me, but I don’t know what I’m looking for. It’s Todd and my sister. What should I see?

Regan straightens his jacket, takes a deep breath, and turns on Jessica. And I mean turns on her, baring his teeth like an animal about to attack. “I always knew you were a cheat. Don’t waste your money on lawyers. That prenup is iron.”

I feel like I’ve stepped into some play where I missed the first act. I don’t know what’s happening. But I know it’s very bad.

Regan sort of pulls himself straight, like he’s trying to get back some of his lost dignity. He doesn’t even look at any of us, just walks to the door. Then he turns. “Hey, I hope you two will be very happy. Actually, you three.”

Then he’s gone.

Nobody says anything.

I turn to look at Jessica. And I see something I never saw before. They are standing together, she and Todd. More than just near each other. Together.

It’s not possible.

Not possible!

In that flash that slices through all reason and experience and history, right down to that instinct part of the brain, I know.

Just like that.

Blind? How about dumb and deaf, too?

They just stand there, silent, waiting for it to disappear. Waiting for fucking stupid Elizabeth to save them with some incredible rationalization. To find some reason for it all to go away.

Or maybe just for me to disappear.

“I don’t even want to guess what he’s talking about,” I say. “I want you to tell me.”

Jessica starts on how he’s crazy jealous and that’s why she’s leaving him.

I turn to Todd and tell him he’s been acting weird since she got here. “Do you hate her that much?”

He answers me, but he’s looking at her. “Of course I don’t hate her,” he says.

It’s like he’s waiting for her to save him.

But she can’t. Nobody can. Nobody can but me. And I’m not going to. Ever.

Regan’s right. “It was right in front of my eyes and I didn’t see it.”

“It’s not like that,” Todd says, but I cut him off.

“Was it funny, my stupidity? Did you laugh about it? Or were you just grateful?”

Jessica starts to come toward me, but I put up my hand to stop her.

“I take it back. I don’t want to hear any of it. Go to hell, both of you!”

I grab my purse and start toward the door in such a haze of fury that I barely see the door. I swing around to Todd, “I don’t know when this started. Or how long it’s been going on.” Then I wave my finger at both of them. “I only know one thing: You’re both despicable lowlifes!”

“Liz—” He starts to say something, but I cut him off. I don’t want to hear anything from either of them.

“Liars! How could you do this to me?”

I sail to the door in a fury, my head screaming for me to slam it with enough force to break the wall.

But at the door my rage deserts me and collapses into defeat. I’ve lost everything. It’s not possible that the most important things in my life are gone. Wiped out, just like that.

The shock of it turns my legs to rubber, and I barely have the strength to pull the door closed behind me. I hear the quiet click and I’m outside with my back pressed against the door, dizzy. Numb. With just enough strength left to propel me to the car.

Would that it were a nightmare! Please, let it be a nightmare that I can wake up from.

But it’s not.

I get in the car and just sit there, stunned. My mind starts searching. I grab at all kinds of thoughts to explain this madness. When could this have happened? It can’t be recent, Jessica hasn’t been here. And not during the years she was in L.A. No, this is earlier. My mind focuses down on that weird time in college that I have never been able to explain. That thing with Todd and Winston. Somehow—I don’t know how—I know it’s got to be connected.

That would mean they have been betraying me for years. All the while pretending to love me.

I turn the key and press my foot down hard on the accelerator. It makes a roar.

And I roar.

Inside my car, with the windows closed, I roar in pain. Like a wounded animal.

I release the brake and put the car in drive, put my foot down, and screech away.

I’m not going to let them see me sitting in the car in front of the house.

I’m not going to let them ever see me again. Anywhere. I swear.

And now Elizabeth was going to be right there. And Jessica and Todd would see her again. No matter what she swore. Was she a fool to do this?

*   *   *

Liam pulled up at the curb outside the airport exit in his rented black Ford right on time.

“Yo, Liz. Over here!”

Like there was any way to miss this super handsome guy in a gorgeous pinstriped black suit, white shirt, and bright red tie.

“You look great,” Elizabeth said, throwing her knapsack into the backseat. “Why are you leaving Hollywood? You’re obviously movie-star material.”

“Thank you. And you look fabulous. No way you just stepped off a six-hour plane ride.”

“I cheated. I changed in the ladies’ room.”

They chatted comfortably for the hour and a half ride to Sweet Valley. Just before they arrived at the club, Liam asked, “Are you okay?”

“No.”

“Can I help?”

“Only if we can change places, but I don’t do red ties.”

“Have you figured out your entrance?”

“Spoken like a true actor. I just did six hours of entrance practice cross-country. Five hundred different approaches and I still don’t have it right. I don’t know whether to pretend like nothing happened or ignore them. Spit in his face or rap her over the head with a turkey platter or just knee him in the groin. What do you think?”

“You have some nice choices there. But I think since it’s your grandmother’s party I would dump the action stuff. Play it cool, treat them like second cousins once removed you probably won’t ever see again.”

“I like the once-removed part.”

“Feeling better?”

“Not at all. The only thing that keeps me sane is my dread theory.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s simple and absolutely natural. If you dread something, I mean really dread it, right from the heart, it’s going to turn out awesome, like, ninety percent of the time. The converse is that if you can’t wait to get to that party, it’s a sure bomb. But there’s a hitch: It’s got to be real. If you pretend the dread, it doesn’t work.”

“Well, this is a sort of party…”

“And I’m dreading it. Big time.”

“It should work.”

*   *   *

The country club was as all country clubs are: a sprawling clubhouse set in manicured, rolling green hills surrounded by a golf course and little else, but lovely in the seventy-degree, sunny Southern California weather.

Liam parked in the guest lot and they sat quietly in the car for nearly fifteen minutes until Elizabeth was relaxed enough to get out.

The minute she stood up, she began to tremble. “I love my grandmother, but this is probably a bad idea. I think it’s too soon.”

“Eight months? No. You wait too long and you lose your family. You become the outsider.”

“I feel like I’m an outsider already.” Just that terrible realization garnered Elizabeth’s courage, and outrage. “Damn it, they’re my family, too, and I’m not going to let them just take it away. Along with everything else they’ve stolen from me. I know it’s ugly to feel this way about my own sister, but I really hate her. And him, too.”

Elizabeth stopped just before the tears started. Liam put his hand on her shoulder. “You want me to punch him?”

“Yeah, except he’s bigger than you are. A lot bigger, but it’s nice of you to offer.”

“How about her? That might be more my speed.”

“I’m really glad you came with me.”

“Just remember—keep dreading!”

Elizabeth reached into the backseat and took her grandmother’s gift from her backpack. She smoothed the ribbons and tucked it under her arm. “Come on, I’m ready,” she said, taking Liam’s hand and heading for the clubhouse.

The gravel path up from the parking lot kept Elizabeth unsteady on her heels. As unsteady as she felt in her heart. How sheltered her life had been until now. There had been other times when she was scared and miserable, but because of a freak of nature, she’d never suffered them alone. Not like she was now.

She had run away from everyone and stayed away for the better part of a year. Even if she had their sympathy in the beginning, Jessica was a daughter, too, a sister and a granddaughter, family. They loved her and in these months they would have seen her suffering—she had to be suffering. They would have come to feel compassion for her. It would be natural.

Being there is an enormous advantage. Like teams playing on home territory.

In the beginning, they had sided with Elizabeth, the victim, but time had passed and everyone’s lives had moved on. Maybe they saw how much Jessica and Todd loved each other and their hearts had opened.

The two of them had to love each other completely or they never could have done such a thing. Was there room in Elizabeth’s heart to allow that love? To forgive it?

She would know when she saw them.

*   *   *

Jessica only found out that Elizabeth was coming that very afternoon when her mother called.

“Did you just find out today?” she asked.

“No, I’ve known since last week, but she wanted to keep it a surprise for Grandmommy.”

“What about me? Like, how could you not tell me?”

Alice Wakefield knew this was going to be difficult. Twenty-seven years of her less-than-perfect—a lot less than perfect but extremely loveable—daughter had taught Alice how to avoid the deepest pitfalls. She had learned that the best way was to keep cool and loving. It wasn’t always easy, but the alternative was tears and shouting and tantrums.

“Look, honey, I know this is hard for you. I understand that, but we’re a family and it’s time we started behaving like one. Not like this angry, broken mess we’ve been. It’s courageous of your sister to come. She’s only doing it because she loves all of us.”

“
You
maybe, but definitely not me. Between Steven and Elizabeth, everyone is going to hate me. I so can’t go!”

It was at this point in every Jessica argument that Alice Wakefield cut to the chase. “It’s your grandmother’s eightieth birthday. You have to go.” One couldn’t hear the foot coming down, but it did.

“Todd is not going to be happy.”

“Probably not, but it’s your grandmother’s happiness we’re interested in right now.”

“Are you like making me go?”

“Yes.”

“That’s the only reason I’m doing it, because you’re making me,” said the twenty-seven/thirteen-year-old. “I don’t know what Todd is going to do.”

“Act like a man, I hope. I expect you both at the club at six thirty.” The conversation ended there, but Alice was certain Jessica and Todd would both be at the party.

Actually, Todd had been in the house the whole time. In fact, he was at his computer in the second bedroom turned office, and he heard enough to guess what was happening. As Jessica said, he wasn’t happy.

Though he was desperately in love with Jessica, after the debacle eight months earlier he was suffering a deep, painful guilt for what he’d done to Elizabeth. Love was a lousy excuse. Even if Elizabeth were to buy it, he could never excuse himself. It was without question the worst thing he had ever done to anybody in his life. And to have done it to one of the best people he’d ever known was unforgivable.

In these last months, as the story spread, he found it harder and harder to be in Sweet Valley. But Jessica refused to move. She was deeply involved in her work. Sometimes he wasn’t sure how much she was suffering, though she seemed to be. He hoped to God she really was, but he couldn’t always tell and that bothered him.

After all these years, he didn’t think he was deluding himself. He’d known Jessica Wakefield since grade school. Yes, she could be self-absorbed, yes, she could be a little selfish, but she was delightful, charming, smarter than most people knew, and utterly captivating. He never would really know her completely, and that mystery fascinated him. He’d never felt that way about any other woman. He couldn’t get enough of her.