The Hiding Place (21 page)

“More than now?” Nick challenged.

He heard Jordan Lohan clear his throat. “It’s wonderful that you and Claire will be there waiting for her. If only she could get away for a while, or even leave the area completely, it would surely be best. Our son Laird was so distraught to lose his child that he left—”

“With his new wife,” Nick cut in, “while the woman who had delivered his dead child was still comatose. Look, I appreciate your getting her back to us. I’ll be coming with her as soon as possible to visit her daughter’s grave,” he said, trying to sound decisive and strong. He wanted to say much more to this man, who was corrupted by his absolute power—actually, he wanted to beat him to a pulp—but Claire needed him, so he kept his mouth shut and ended the call.

“Aunt Tara got caught in the storm today,” he told Claire, squatting to her level. “She was taking a long walk and got cold and wet. She fainted, so a doctor and an old friend of hers are bringing her home. We’ll just give her time to let her tell us what happened her own way, okay?”

Wide-eyed, looking older than her years, Claire nodded. “Fainted. It isn’t as bad as a coma, is it, like she was in before?”

“No, she’s awake and just fine,” he assured her. But he realized that Tara might never be just fine for a long, long time. And he was astounded by how damn much it mattered to him.

Footprints in the snow…bloody footprints in the snow. She’d obviously been hemorrhaging that night, no doubt from childbirth, Tara told herself. At least, they didn’t let her die, but then, they couldn’t have simply had her cremated and stuck away in some old family crypt without a lot of questions.

Frowning, she stared out the passenger window into the rain as Dr. Middleton drove her truck up Shadow Mountain Road. At the clinic, he had rushed in and broken an ammonia capsule under her nose. Now Jim Manning was leading them in his truck, his taillights blinking in the rain so they could follow. But her mind was following her own thoughts. In fainting, she’d hit her head. Had it jarred loose some memories of her daughter’s birth? Surely, Jordan Lohan had not told her everything. She remembered bright lights—flashes in her eyes. Yes, twisting pain and crying, crying, crying…

But was that her crying or the child’s or Laird’s sobbing, or…

“Not feeling faint again, are you, Tara?” the doctor asked. He was Veronica’s doctor and seemed nice enough. He wasn’t someone who had ever attended her—she’d asked. If he had, right now, however bad she felt, she would have been interrogating him as she never had any other witness. She almost said,
I’m okay,
but that would have been such a lie. To answer his question, she said, “No,” and looked out the side window again.

Maybe, just as they’d forced her to wake up today, they had brought her out of her drug-induced coma when the labor started. Maybe they thought she could help deliver the child. Then, after the miscarriage, when they were all focused on the baby, she’d gotten away somehow, run out in the snow bleeding. They’d thought she’d still be comatose, but she’d been aroused and agonized by a
vaginal delivery.
Just like today, she’d made it to the chapel where Veronica was playing the organ. Jim had found her and called for help, so Veronica knew something had happened. Still, she did believe that Veronica had tried to tell her that Laird had married Jen, but that her former mother-in-law had not known about the child.

Her thoughts tied themselves in knots and twisted like spiderwebs. She was never so happy to see home—that is, Nick’s home—than she was when it appeared through the rain.

She would see her child’s resting place tomorrow, hold the urn, then try to build a new life. Somehow, she must go on, even if she lost Claire and Nick and Beamer.

Nick opened the car door and lifted her in his arms. Over his shoulder, through the slant of rain, she saw Claire waving from the lit doorway with Beamer at her side. Nick’s touch was so strong and sure. Exhausted, beaten, grieving, she buried her face against him. Cradling her, he strode inside with her close to his heart.

N
ick fixed dinner and fed Claire while Tara took a shower and fell into a deep sleep. All she’d told him was, “It’s true. I had a daughter. I’m going to see where her ashes are tomorrow. If you can come…”

“Of course I can. I’ll be right beside you through this.”

She had shaken her head. “Don’t make promises,” she’d whispered, still not meeting his eyes, but staring off toward the blank wall behind him. “Because it will take me forever to get through this.”

After Claire was ready for bed and Tara was awake, the child went in to see her, then darted right out and told Nick as he was wiping the table, “She says, can you come in too.”

Tara was in bed, in a white terry-cloth robe, with the covers pulled up to her hips. She reached out to pat the bed. That must have been some sort of sign, because Claire lifted the corner of the covers and got in beside her. Tara put her arms around the child.

“Sit, Nick, please,” Tara said, nodding toward the bed. “I want to tell you both something.”

He sat, about at her knee level, feeling almost like an intruder.

“I just found out today,” she said, looking down at Claire, “that when I was in my coma, I had a baby, a little girl, but she died right when she was born.”

“Oh, no!” Claire cried. “That’s as bad as losing a mom!” She lifted her head from Tara’s shoulder to look closely into her eyes.

Nick thought Tara looked like a ghost of herself, pale, mournful, almost ethereal. Her voice was a whisper nearly muffled by the wind and rain. He ached to hold her.

“I had an idea it might be true,” Tara went on, “but it was still a big shock. To learn there was a child and to lose that child all at once—and that she’s been gone for two-and-a-half years.”

“But you still have me,” Claire told her. “At least, unless Uncle Nick takes me away.”

“Claire, this isn’t the time for—” he started to protest, but Tara held up her hand.

“I will always love you as a daughter,” she told Claire, “and I wanted you to know why I’m so sad.”

“And I’ll bet you’re mad too,” Claire said, “that she died and they didn’t tell you sooner!”

That outburst made Tara feel as if she herself had spoken. But she felt so bereft, so exhausted that she couldn’t handle that right now. “If Uncle Nick will put you to bed, I need some sleep,” she said, kissing Claire’s forehead.

With a big bear hug, Claire kissed Tara’s cheek and scrambled out of the bed. But as Nick rose to go tuck her in, Claire asked, “What was her name, Aunt Tara?”

“Her name was—is—Sarah Veronica Lohan-Kinsale. Sarah for one of her grandmothers and Veronica for the other. But we will call her Sarah.”

“It’s a real pretty name, and even though I never get to meet her, she’s kind of my sister now.”

Nick saw that Tara, fighting to hold herself together, was ready to burst into tears, so he scooped Claire up and put her in bed. A few minutes later, when he left her room, he saw that Tara’s door was still open with the light on. From his earlier night-watchman forays to check on the place, he knew she slept with it closed and her light off. He tiptoed back to close the door.

“Nick?”

“Yeah. Just going to close your door.”

“Don’t, okay?” she called to him. “I can’t stand to feel closed off, closed out right now.”

He peeked in at her. She was still huddled in her robe under the covers. Leaning one shoulder on the door frame, he said, “I understand. It doesn’t help to be alone in times of loss.”

“You know whereof you speak. Feel like talking?”

“Sure, but you need sleep.”

“Feel like holding someone, then—just for a little while?”

He covered the space to her in four quick strides, sat on the edge of the bed with his back to the headboard and reached for her. At first he cradled her as he might Claire, but then he stretched out next to her, shoes and all, outside the covers, and held her hard.

She clung to him, her face pressed against his neck, wetting his throat with her tears. The pillow they shared was soaked.

They didn’t move for what seemed to him like minutes but was hours. He could see her bedside clock. As he felt her eventually relax against him, he settled into a more comfortable position. Shifting his weight, he heard her sigh as she turned over, her back to him so they lay spoon fashion with his chest and thighs cradling her back and bottom.

He wanted her. But he wanted even more than that to make the agony of her loss, mingled with guilt and anger, go away. It didn’t work to try to bury losses. You had to face them, feel them, work through them. Through Tara’s struggles, he was learning that about himself. Post-traumatic stress disorder was something they, unfortunately, shared.

“Nick?” she said, startling him from dark dreams of mountain caves and the bright bang of an explosion. “What, sweetheart?”

“Claire’s right. I’m sad, but I’m really mad. I want to go to the Lohan estate today and then see where they put Sarah’s ashes, but I don’t trust that man or my former husband any farther than I could throw this entire mountain.”

“You’ve got a bodyguard with you now, Tara. All the way.”

Holding a bouquet of white calla lilies in her lap, Tara frowned out the front window as Nick drove them through the neighborhood of Kerr Gulch where she and Laird used to live. Today she was not nervous, not distraught, just deeply hurt and angry. She kept telling herself she was under control.

“Quite a place,” Nick observed as they passed through the Lohan monogrammed gates that had to be buzzed open from the house. “Exclusive privacy, great views and huge lots.”

“This estate is about twelve acres and worth about three million dollars, I guess,” Tara said, her voice a monotone as if she were reciting the alphabet. “The house Laird and I had was on a five-acre lot, but it would have been better for us to be in a hut and happy. Pull up under the porte cochere.”

A dove-gray Lincoln Town Car was parked there, but Tara had no intention of riding with Jordan to the site he’d mentioned. She actually wanted to go just with Nick, but she didn’t know where the crypt, as Jordan had called it, was. Knowing him, he’d have the place locked up.

Before they rang the bell, Rita, Veronica’s plump, middle-aged Mexican maid, opened the door for them. With Veronica away for treatment again, Rita was probably filling in at different jobs.

“Rita, it’s good to see you again,” Tara said, extending her hand.

Looking surprised, then grateful, Rita took it. “So sorry for your loss, Ms. Kinsale. Mr. Lohan told the staff, and he’s going to tell Mrs. Lohan today. So very sorry for you and Mr. Laird and—”

“This is my friend Nick MacMahon,” Tara said as Rita eyed Nick, then gestured for them to step inside the huge stone house.

“Mr. Lohan will be right with you,” she said, and led them past windows that overlooked the covered courtyard pavilion into the hand-hewn beamed great room. The room had panoramic views of the gold and green valley and blue-gray mountains. The rain was over; it looked to be a clear day. All the furniture in the spacious room was oversize; it had always made Tara feel as if she were Alice in Wonderland and she’d eaten something that had shrunk her.

A silver tray on a low table held a coffee carafe and a porcelain plate of pecan rolls. “May I serve you?” Rita asked.

“We’re fine. Thanks, Rita,” Tara said, so the maid left them alone.

Nick poured himself coffee, then went over to study the impressive array of pictures of Jordan with powerful politicians, from state senators to the governor and even the vice president. Tara knew the Lohans had always been big political contributors on both the state and national levels, but she was long past being impressed with anything they did.

She drifted around the room, ignoring the power photos in lieu of the personal ones in carefully arranged clusters on the grand piano and the walls. Of course, there were plenty of Thane’s three children, and old family photos of Laird’s family when he and Thane were small. All of her photos had disappeared, but, Tara noted, there were none of Laird and Jen either. Perhaps Jordan and Veronica were ashamed of how quickly he’d dumped his comatose wife for another woman. Or, like Susanne, had Jordan had some removed so they wouldn’t upset her more than she already was?

Tara looked for the yearly, three-generation Lohan photo, but found it missing. Unlike at Susanne’s house, there was no bare spot on the wall over the massive stone mantel where the current one had always hung. Instead, she saw, there was one of the family of four when Thane and Laird were about high school age. Tara noted the photos were all by the same photographer, Robert Randel, the man who had taken pictures she’d been in during the two years of her marriage. If Rita came back in, she’d ask her about that, because—

“You are not only prompt but early,” Jordan said as he strode into the room, rubbing his hands together as if he were washing them. “Nick, I’m glad to meet you and thank you for lending support to Tara. I see Rita has offered you something,” he said with a jerky gesture at the tray. “I was just phoning to check on Veronica this morning. I’ll be heading over there to explain everything to her after our visit to the crypt. I know she’ll be greatly grieved too. How I wish I could have protected both of you from such dreadful news, Tara.”

Tara thought he was on edge, which was unusual. He was trying to fill the air with chatter. She was tempted to ask him the location of the current family photo, which surely must include Laird and Jen, but he’d have some slick answer for her. No, she’d find out about that another way, from someone more likely to tell the truth. She hadn’t learned to be a P.I. and a skip tracer for nothing. Once she’d seen her baby’s resting place, she just might do a little research on Laird and Jen. It shouldn’t matter to her when they fell in love, when he decided to desert her, but somehow it did.

Tara cringed every time anyone, including herself, said the word
crypt.
It conjured up images of haunted Halloweens or old horror movies. She expected to see a decrepit, spiderweb-covered hulk with a creaking door.