The Angry Woman Suite (32 page)

I saw how it
could’ve
happened. I saw the hot ash from Matthew’s cigar simmering on the Persian carpet in the great room. I saw the first red spark, the quick breath of flame. I saw the fire jump and feed on curtains and upholstery and furniture. I saw it savage the wall where the front door had been, making an opening wide enough to drive a truck through. I saw the fire punched back by a heavy gust of night air, and saw it turn and rush the hallway, falling in rank and file, fingers of flame at attention, waiting.

They had to have smelled it.

I saw Matthew struggle to rise. Saw him fight to lift Sahar from the bed and into her wheelchair. He gasped for breath and his limbs jumped—just as Sahar had described. I heard him damn tonight of all nights, the servants’ night off. And then he fought to push Sahar’s wheelchair into the hallway—no one ever fought so damn hard. Only to see those stubby fingers of flame. Still, there was just that one way out. Down that finger-lined hallway, through the great room.

He positioned himself in front of the wheelchair. He meant to pull it, to shield Sahar with his own body. But that was when the fingers of fire scurried forward. Sahar screamed and her eyes widened as flame licked the hem of her gown—and then I saw the skin of Matthew’s feet and ankles blister, shrink and darken. I saw the agony of terrible comprehension on his face.

Oh, but it’s a horrible way to die, getting burned alive and having to watch it happen to yourself from the toes up.

Almost as horrible as knowing
I
was way too late.
And all because I’d been with Magdalene, betraying Jamie.

The guilt piercing something inside me was shrapnel-sharp and whatever that something was, it began withering, killing me along with Matthew and Sahar.

Matthew’s clothing ignited, and Sahar squealed and twisted in her wheelchair
—
and then, stunned, I saw our one-time
invalid jump out of that chair and run for her life—Matthew gave a mighty bellow.
“Sahar!”
He rammed the great room, pushing Sahar’s wheelchair through the holocaust and out the incinerated front of the mill house. Hair ablaze, he staggered before disappearing in flame, uttering the cry meant to haunt me the rest of my days:

“Aiiiidan!”

I was shrieking, completely out of my mind of course, running in circles, trying to find a break in the noose of the nightmare I was caught in, but I could no more undo it than I could undo what Lear and I had already started.

A curtain of fire parted. Sahar’s wheelchair reappeared, wheels spinning, metal gleaming in firelight, under the old oak tree. Another movement caught my eye: a shadow in the grove, darting behind a tree. The shadow soared, then shortened, then swelled again. I made a dash for it, but it flickered, then disappeared—a trick of that firelight perhaps, because all I saw was Sahar sprawled face down on the ground, and Matthew sprawled behind her, both chillingly silent. The screams of agony, of terror, were done. Now there was really
nothing.

“Aiiiidan!”

Nothing but the screaming of my soul and the hissing of the scene I turned to flee—but then the shadow that had been in the grove loomed at my side. It gripped my shoulder and spun me around, making me face it, completing the splintering of my world.

“I saw her too!”
Lear yelled. “I saw Stella! Same as you! Oh my god, Aidan, but look at what Stella’s done now!”

And that, dear Francis, was
it.

It
being when Stella Grayson was decided as the perpetrator of the fire that killed the Waterstons.

It
being when an innocent woman became an angry one, and I let it happen.

***

“Well, she did it again,” Jamie said, shoulders back, hands in his pockets, eyes still on the smoking rubble.

“Stella, you mean?”

“No.
Mother.
Jesus, when was the last time you changed clothes, Aidan? You look like crap.”

I’d heard of people who suppress grief when loved ones die, getting bossy instead, putting their sorrow to work directing aftermaths of situations gone horribly out of their control—Jamie was apparently one of those.

“This fire,” Jamie stressed, “was
purposely
set—we’ve been told as much. You remember what I told you about my mother choreographing her own falling
accident
?”

Only one thing could make me feel remotely better. I had to tell Jamie about the paintings. I had to tell him what I’d done—and then what we had to do.

“This fire was along that same line,” Jamie said succinctly.

And then these words were out of my mouth before I could stop them: “You can’t be serious. Why would your mother start a fire she herself would die in?”

“Why,” Jamie countered, “would she throw herself down a flight of stairs?”

I broke eye contact, murmuring, “What do you think about Lear saying he saw
Stella
set the fire?”

“Lear saw bullshit.
Stella wouldn’t hurt a fly—look, Aidan, this fire was set to get attention. Someone was supposed to smell the smoke and run investigate Mother’s sick idea of a joke; she was obviously torturing my father into getting up off his sick bed to stamp out her little campfire. Wouldn’t that have been just like her?”

Jamie’s arm came up like a shot. His clenched fist punched the air, over and over. “Lear is full of it, so don’t even think of backing him up! Even if he is trying to save Magdalene. Listen to me: Stella did
not
kill my parents. And Lothian did
not
do it—and neither did Magdalene, though some
will
try and make a case against her—”

“No!” I protested. “No one will blame Magdalene!”

“Shut up! Just shut the hell up!” Jamie drew a quavery breath. “The whispers will go something like this:
Magdalene Grayson Forsythe followed America’s foremost painter all over the country, but when he wouldn’t leave his wife for her, she went off the deep end and fried both Waterstons to a crisp!”

I shook my head, nauseated, aware I’d been digging ditches big enough to hold Delaware County. Aware I was a class-A asshole. Aware Jamie had
not
forgiven me for shutting his father out after all. Aware he now intended to exact the supreme punishment by burying me in one of my own ditches. But first he was going to torture me and take his time doing it.

“So, yeah, thanks to you, Aidan, I think people
are
going to be looking to Magdalene. Didn’t you think someone might’ve noticed your reaction to Magdalene and my father going out on tour together, when, really, it made perfect sense? Regular people who saw you every day, man about town that you are? And speculate that you,
the
ultimate Waterston insider, knew something they didn’t?

“Aidan, you screwed up
big
when you chose to side with my mother, the so-called victim who blinded you to the point that you couldn’t see
she
was a psychopath thriving on watching everyone twist in the wind, herself included! She’s got you twisting
now,
doesn’t she? Setting this damn fire!”

My head throbbed. Jamie was right: Magdalene
was
on dangerous ground because of me. But I couldn’t implicate Lear publicly—that road led straight to
me.
I looked at where Jamie was looking, at the blackened husk of the mill house. It was a day of rare dazzling light. I had to make him see there was another way.

Jamie’s voice went tighter. “Magdalene’s having another child—and Lear Grayson is going to try floating the scenario that Stella set the fire because she was punishing my father for supposedly getting her sister pregnant—but I can’t let that happen! It’s not right: Stella is
not
dispensable just because she’s ugly and can’t speak intelligibly. So I
must
tell people the truth about my mother; otherwise Magdalene
will
be blamed.”

Another layer of grief settled over my nausea. Nothing was ever going to be the same again.

Jamie lowered his voice. “I couldn’t tell you about Magdalene and me because you were just so unreasonable about her, Aidan, especially after the suite came out. Now Magdalene won’t come to California with me. But she says if
I
don’t go, she’ll never speak to me again. Earl’s starting at your school this term. Magdalene’s hell-bent on you being his teacher.”

“That so?” I said listlessly.

“Magdalene says she won’t
ever
marry me, despite the baby. She says she’s not the marrying kind.”

I raised my chin. “That so?” I repeated.

“But I think the real reason Magdalene won’t marry me is Lothian.”

I stood taller. “Give Magdalene more credit. I suspect she’s telling the truth: she
isn’t
the marrying kind.”

“Well, it goes without saying I aim to change her mind—someday.”

I squinted into the horizon. “So you say.” I stole a sidelong look. The time had come—but Jamie’s brow had furrowed again, and my mouth dried when he glanced up at the second floor windows of Washington’s Headquarters. I watched him leach into paler versions of himself. Dissembling even as he spoke, Jamie’s words were faint:

“Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that my mother
didn’t
set a fire to get my father’s attention. Let’s say she did it to get someone
else’s
attention.” His gaze landed back on me. Prickles of fear rose on the back of my thighs. “When
exactly
was the last time you saw my mother alive, Aidan?”

I
had
to answer; I spoke slowly, choosing words carefully. “The afternoon of the fire. When she told me that you were leaving for California, and about your father moving back into the mill house. She told me he was ill. I found her attitude … curious. We nearly had words.”

“Go on.”

“That’s all. And when I got home to Washington’s Headquarters—”

“You went upstairs, and looking out your bedroom window you saw … everything? My mother? You saw my mother in the meadow, didn’t you? Trying to get your attention. Because hindsight being what it is, she knew she’d upset you and she wanted to make up. Look at me. Are you still protecting my mother, Aidan?”

“I didn’t see your mother in the meadow, Jamie.”

Jamie’s eyes widened. “So, then … you actually saw …
Stella?”

It was one of those ambiguous answers, words that could’ve meant almost anything:

“I saw every Grayson
but
Stella in that one 24-hour period, Jamie, but unfortunately I never looked out a window until it was too late for your parents—I’m so sorry.”

“Wait—you saw
every
Grayson … you mean you saw Magdalene too? The night of the fire?”

We just looked at each other—and then I saw the sudden awareness of my guilt in his eyes.

“Bury what’s left,” Jamie said abruptly, stepping away from me. “The studio, too.”

I hadn’t been prepared for this. “But the studio is salvageable! Besides, the studio’s part of your father’s legacy and—”

“Knock it down! I don’t care and you shouldn’t either. The studio impedes your view of the meadow.
I
wouldn’t want to be responsible for impeding any more of your views, Aidan.”

Panic made me dogged. “But I’ve something to tell you! I
have
the Angry—” I was brought up short by saying just those few words aloud. Still, wanting to come clean and at least thinking of
how
I could tell Jamie I’d saved his father’s suite, was
some
reassurance that my sense of right and wrong was
still relatively intact, surviving even my desire for Magdalene.

But damn, just how unfair had it been to
me?
Magdalene showing up at my door the night of the fire and pulling me into her distress?

Stop—something’s bothering me, Francis. I’m trying to stay with facts—but reading over that last paragraph, I realize it’s less than truthful. There’s another, truer picture coming to mind:

It’s nearly dark, and I’m just back from my useless run alongside the Brandywine. I see Magdalene on the side of the road, walking. It’s turned suddenly cold. I believe I might’ve invited her in. To warm herself by a fire, for something hot to drink. It might’ve happened that way, Francis, instead of her just showing up on my front stoop as if looking for me specifically.

Stop again—I’m remembering something else: Magdalene was
crying.

So I ran outside, arms outstretched, and gathered her close. I groaned when she told me of her love for Jamie, and about their child, and what, she’d worried once I’d bundled her inside Washington’s Headquarters, was she to do next? She couldn’t go on the road with Jamie—the road was no place for
two
children. Should she let Jamie go, as in “once and for all,” accepting Sahar’s offer to allow the assumption that Matthew was her baby’s father? “To put it mildly,”
that
would also end things with Jamie … but maybe it was the best thing, long term? Jamie’s was a talent the world rarely saw, and the world would continue missing out if he were based in New York the rest of his life. But was letting Jamie go the right thing for their child? Then there was the trust fund Sahar had offered to set up for the baby
and
Earl if she
were
to let Jamie go, without strings. Money was nothing to sneeze at, not when she had a family to think of, and money still short.

“Nothing
is easy,” she told me, tears welling in her pale eyes. “Hard decisions are just that: they’re hard.”

Those eyes beseeched me … to do what? My head had whirled with confusion.

I heard myself say, “What is it you want from
me,
Magdalene? What can I do?”

She stared at me. “I just want you to see me. I’ve always wanted you to recognize me, Aidan. I’ve wanted that almost as much—no, more …” she didn’t finish the sentence.

I looked at her helplessly. “But I
do
see you.”

“No!” she cried then. “You never have, Aidan, not once! You’ve never seen the
real
me!”

And, oh god, that’s when it had happened, when I saw past every one of Magdalene’s glorious, pained features and onto every inch of her shiny, naked fear, and her fierce yearning to have it all versus her compulsion to pit right against wrong. When I’d felt her dilemma converge with the same yearning I had.