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Authors: Kate Wilhelm

Tags: #Suspense

The Hamlet Trap (23 page)

BOOK: The Hamlet Trap
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She forced herself to look at him, to hear what he was saying, to return from the great distance she had fled to at Charlie's words. She looked at him, and heard her own voice say, “Yes. But no changes. Everything exactly the way we have it planned. A meeting the day after…”

Gray was at the door. He stopped and looked back at her sharply, then shrugged. “Whatever you say.” He left.

When he had gone Ginnie turned to Charlie. “It all started with Sunshine and her play, didn't it?”

“I'm almost sure they'll accept that,” Charlie answered carefully.

“Before Brenda gets here,” Constance said, “we want to tell you who hired us to help you. Let's all sit down a minute or two.”

Ginnie looked from Constance to Charlie in disbelief when Constance finished telling about the visit from Dr. Braden and his wife.

“They were right,” she said slowly. “I don't want anything from them. My mother didn't and neither do I.”

“Your decision,” Charlie said. “They'll show up one day and you can run them off or not, as you choose.”

“It's another piece of my past,” she said. “You've given me back a past I never had. We should know our own pasts, shouldn't we?”

“As much as we can bear,” Constance said. “Not all, not always. Ginnie, you had nothing to do with the fire that killed your father. Nothing.”

“I know,” she said in a whisper. “Now I know. I didn't. For so many years I had bad dreams about fires, about running and screaming trying to escape. I woke up sweating and crying. But I couldn't have helped my father. He was dead already. There wasn't anything I could have done. You let me remember all that. I don't know how, but you did it for me. I owe you a lot.” She breathed deeply. “It's better to remember. It really is.”

“It isn't all the way over,” Constance said gently. “They'll have more questions, of course. Whatever comes up, remember that Ro loved you very, very much, more than he could say.”

Ginnie looked at her hands clenched together on the table. After a moment she nodded. “Yes. I know he did. But no one's going to dig up any more of the past now. Sunshine did it, and it started with her play. The nightmare started with her play, we all know that.”

Constance nodded. “I don't think Sunshine will want to share billing with you, Ro, anyone else. It's her new production, written, directed, starred in, produced by Sunshine. I think that's how she'll play it, but just in case, be warned.”

Constance and Charlie did not linger after Brenda arrived. Charlie drove down the steep hill carefully. He was getting a headache; it was after eleven, and they had not eaten dinner, he realized.

“She doesn't know it all,” Constance said sadly. “I hope she never does.”

He looked at her hard. “What else is there? She knows damn well that Ro killed Vic and blamed the fire on her to save his skin.”

“She doesn't know that Ro was her father.”

“Good God!”

“Didn't you guess? Shannon suspects, but I don't think she really is sure. She won't tell. And it explains why Lucy punished him so severely, not even telling him indirectly for three years that Ginnie had recovered. And it explains his terrible feeling of guilt over Ginnie, knowing he was responsible for the trauma of the fire, seeing her relapse when Lucy died, watching it overwhelm her again recently. He knew he was responsible for so much of it, and he loved her more than he could say. He probably believed the theory about children born of incestuous relationships. He watched for signs of instability, saw them over and over. Poor Ro. Poor Ginnie.”

“You're guessing, aren't you?”

“Of course. The way we both guessed that he took that missing sketchbook. It must have given him a terrible start when he saw that figure on the floor, but she obviously didn't remember, so he returned it, tried to dismiss it, and watched her more closely than ever. I'm guessing, but if I were doing therapy with her, I'd act on all this as if I knew it for a fact.”

He grunted, remembering being at the inn, Constance's protests about the trap he was preparing. “We both know Sunshine did it,” he had maintained. “I know it for a fact and I don't have a scrap of evidence. Probably there isn't any to be had. If she doesn't confess, they'll nail Ginnie for sure. If she's convinced that I do know it for a fact, I think she'll talk, go all the way. I've seen that happen more times than I want to think about. But I need strong bait for Ro to snap at.” He had returned to the end of the synopsis of the play he was writing in Sunshine's name.

What he had written was: “When you start unraveling the past, it doesn't stop until it's all out, back to day one. You can't stop it, all you can do is keep it from starting. If you don't follow my orders, do exactly what I want, I'll tell her who her father really is, tell her why she's so crazy.”

He shook his head; the headache was gaining ground. He had not consciously thought about Ro and Ginnie, that he was her father. It had been enough to know that Ro had taken his little sister as lover, enough to know that Ro had killed Vic. He had simply wanted to make the stupid play a compelling reason to make Ro jump. And he had. He had.

Now all he wanted was dinner, a quiet evening with Constance, and two airline tickets for Hawaii. Hot beaches, brilliant sunlight, mai tais in the shade of a palm tree. Constance put her hand on his leg, the way she did when he drove, and he covered it with his hand, the way he did. The fact that she was now feeding ideas directly into his brain did not bother him at all.

BOOK: The Hamlet Trap
5.82Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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