The Other Daughter (16 page)

Harper, of course, had dreamed big. From the very beginning he'd bought the right clothes, trimmed the calluses from his hands, and done his best to appear even more upper class than the people who were born into it. Even though he'd been a struggling med student, no one had questioned his roots.

Patricia suspected that Harper also thought this facade was important to her, because she'd grown up in the lap of Texas oil luxury. He would never have it be said that she married beneath her or that he provided less for her. Love and money were intrinsically tied in his mind.

Patricia respected that. She admired it. Harper fit the model of man she'd come to know so well: conservative, hardheaded, firm. She supposed that's why she loved him so much. No matter what he did, he was familiar to her. His shortcomings were her father's shortcomings, his strengths her father's strengths. His brand of caring, her father's brand of caring. There were never any surprises, and in her later years she appreciated that.

Once, when she'd been just a child, she'd thought marriage would be about roses and candlelight and never-ending romance. Her husband would always be dashing and passionate. She would always be beautiful and sweet sixteen. Life would be taken care of for her; she would never be lonely or frightened.

Of course marriage didn't work that way. Sometimes, on the bad days, when it required effort just to open her eyes and swing her legs out of bed, she wondered what she was still doing with Harper. What kind of woman stayed with a man who first pursued her with obsession and now hadn't touched her in years? What kind of woman stayed with a man who'd looked at her the way Harper had looked at her the day Meagan's body was identified, as if she was the worst form of life on earth, as if she'd done something even crueler than kill her own child?

On her strong days, however, she acknowledged that this was simply what marriage was about — perseverance. She and Harper had survived the grueling demands of a surgeon's career even as Harper's fellow residents divorced in a giant tidal wave. They had endured the loss of their child when the divorce rate for such couples was over seventy percent. Long after their friends had remarried and divorced for the second time, they were making the decision to adopt a little girl. They had raised their children together. Gotten them through college. Seen them ensconced in their chosen careers.

Their marriage may not be a honeymoon anymore. It may even be more about companionship — which she knew her children, even Melanie, didn't understand — but it was also about having a history. Knowing each other so well. Growing together. Accepting each other.

Weathering life together. Simply weathering it.

The past six months had certainly put that to the test. Since the scene with Brian, Patricia had found herself unhinged in ways she couldn't discuss with her husband, or even with Melanie. She would find herself lying in bed, listening to Harper's snores far away, and thinking of the bottles of gin that beckoned in the parlor, the sweet oblivion she often remembered as a lush, ecstatic dream. Other times she would find herself going downstairs and staring at Meagan's painting, beautiful, happy Meagan, who'd trusted her mother to banish the monsters that hid beneath the bed.

Then, in the brief period when she had given in to the lure of gin and tonic, she'd reached some new level of being permanently off-kilter, where she would wake up at four A.M. and race to Brian's room, convinced he must be there though he hadn't lived at home since he was twenty-four. She would yank out drawers like a woman possessed, searching for old clothes she could hold against her and inhale the scent of her son's skin. And when she failed to find any trace of him still imprinted in the room, when it began to seem that Harper had wiped her firstborn child from the face of the earth, panic would rear its ugly head, and aided by alcohol, devour her alive.

Suddenly she would be desperate to find Meagan.
Meagan darling, where are you? Come home to Mommy. Please, come home
.

The cop would materialize beside her in Brian's darkened room. “At least she didn't suffer, ma'am.”

Her head was cut off — she suffered!

Next, the blue-suited FBI agent would step through the window. “There was nothing you could do, ma'am.”

I shouldn't have left her with Nana. Why did we hire so much help?

Finally, the burly sheriff would slide from beneath the bed, chewing a big plug of tobacco to cover the fact he'd just been ill. “Well, ma'am, at least now you know. It's better to know.”

My baby is never coming home. My baby has no head. Would you look at what he did to her hands? Oh, God, oh, God, why am I still alive? Why couldn't you just kill me? Please, please just kill me…

Curled up on her son's bed twenty-five years later, she would imagine herself sitting on the grass outside the woods where the cops were working. She would hear the buzz of the flies and smell the overripe scent of decay. She would open her mouth to scream and laugh instead. Just laugh, laugh, laugh.

“
It will get better, lass. Somehow, it will get better
.” Jamie had told her that.

But it had gotten worse. For the next five years her life simply spiraled away.

From pushing a new life from her body to picking out the tiny white coffin for a closed-casket funeral, because there wasn't enough left of her four-year-old daughter for a viewing. From active mom to screaming, raving lunatic, turning away from her son, refusing to acknowledge his existence because children just broke your heart. From dutiful wife to frozen, inconsolable human being, refusing Harper's tentative overtures, knowing he blamed her for what happened to their daughter, knowing that he was despite that making amends. Realizing she no longer cared.

A chill had moved over her, until she didn't belong to herself. She shut down, picked up the bottle of gin, and embraced the fog that blanketed her like the softest caress. She lived for the fog, she loved the fog. It was the best lover she'd ever had, and she fell graciously into its arms, smoothing it like a handful of rich soapsuds over her bare, aching breasts. She rolled languorously through the days, not thinking, not feeling, not existing, because then the pain would be too much.

Just kill me, just kill me. Why aren't I dead?

Her father had demanded she stop drinking. Her husband had checked her into a rehab ward, seeking as always a scientific solution to her emotional ills. None of it mattered. She hadn't cared what they thought, she hadn't cared what they wanted or that her son was turning into a somber, hard little man, incapable of smiling. She hadn't cared about anything.

Then Harper, dazed, overwhelmed, workaholic Harper, had done the unexpected. He'd moved them all to Boston, where images of Meagan could no longer torture her or Brian in the halls. And in a single defining moment, the kind of moment that gave her faith in him and hope for their marriage, Harper had brought her to see “Daddy's Girl.”

Patricia had taken one look at Melanie, small, earnest, blue-eyed Melanie, and everything in her had given way.

She fell in love again. The ice cracked, the fog receded. She wanted to hold this little girl so badly, it was a physical ache. She wanted to take care of her troubles, she wanted to tell her it would be all right. She wanted beyond all reason to keep her safe.

She loved little Melanie for being little Melanie. She loved the way she endured the unknown, the way she tried to make people smile. She was strong. She was spirited. She was earnest. She was everything Patricia had always wanted to be but had never quite managed. She was Patricia Stokes's hero.

For Melanie, Patricia had pulled herself together. For Melanie, she'd started to love Brian again, to give him the attention he desperately needed, to give him back his mother. For Melanie, she'd even started loving her husband again, because just when she'd thought there was nothing left between them, he'd given her this most precious gift: a second daughter and a chance to make things right.

The night Melanie came home, Patricia had slowly stripped off her clothes and for the first time in five and a half years, she'd crawled into her husband's arms. Harper had even accepted her, though she knew there had been other women in between and she knew his heart had not completely melted like hers.

When the short physical period ended, she understood. Harper would never love her the way he once had. He would not worship her or pursue her as he'd done in the very beginning. He would not look at her with the same urgent passion.

He would accept her. He would take care of her. But he would not forgive. In Texas, forgiveness was women's work.

Now Harper set down the business section. He picked up the metro news. For a moment she had a glimpse of the face she'd known for thirty-eight years, his eyes still as blue, his jaw still as square, his hair still as thick and golden.

Even at the age of fifty-eight, he looked like the man who had turned her head away from Jamie O'Donnell and swept her off her feet.

She sectioned out another bite of grapefruit.

And unbidden, the memories came back to her — of Texas nights, hot and humid, when the three of them had thought they could take over the world, Jamie so strong, Harper so charming, and Patricia simply so beautiful.

Harper's nothing but a handshake and a smile, lass. He's obsessed with image, not substance. You can do better than him.

He understands me, Jamie.

Why? Because he wears the right clothes, gets a good manicure? Because he'd sell his own mother for an invite to the right party?

Exactly, my love. Exactly.

“I'm sorry, Meagan,” she mouthed to her grapefruit. “I am so sorry.”

Harper lowered his paper. “What?”

“I'm worried about Melanie.”

Harper promptly set down the paper. “She's been working too hard,” he said seriously. Health was his domain, and he'd always been very worried about Melanie's, especially her migraines. “She's got to learn to slow down.”

“I've been trying to help her,” Patricia said, then shrugged delicately. She couldn't get her daughter to slow down any more than she could her husband.

As if reading her mind, Harper said, “What if we all went on a vacation?”

“Pardon?”

“I mean it, Pat.” He leaned forward, sounded earnest. “I've been thinking about it for weeks now. I've always said someday, when I retire, we'll travel everywhere. Well, hell, I'm not getting any younger. None of us are. Maybe it's time to finally be impulsive. Take our children and cruise the world. What d'you say?”

Patricia couldn't say a word. With shaking hands she set down her silver spoon. Cruise the world. Just like that. In her wildest dreams her husband never said such things.

She searched his gaze warily, looking for something she couldn't name. She wondered if her husband knew that even after all these years, she loved him. Even when he put his job before the family. Even when he went out with those silly young twits, then came home and kissed her dryly on the cheek. She wondered if he knew how patiently and quietly she was waiting for the day he did retire and he would belong to her again. Then maybe they could recapture what they'd shared so briefly in those first hot days of Texas. Then maybe they could finally leave all the mutual mistakes, and mutual sins, and mutual regret behind, and start fresh.

Didn't people always say it's never too late for new beginnings?

“Would you …would you leave the hospital?”

“Well, not
leave it
leave it.”

Patricia ducked her head so he wouldn't see her disappointment. “A vacation, then? Like a week or two?”

“Longer. Maybe four months, six months. Hell, maybe I could be really wild and take a leave of absence.”

A leave of absence. That got her attention again. She didn't know whether to be thrilled or suspicious. She did her best to sound interested. “Really? When?”

Harper said matter-of-factly, “I was thinking next week.”

In the sudden quiet of the patio, Patricia was certain her husband would be able to hear the pounding of her heart. Next week. Harper never moved that fast. He never did anything as dramatic as take a leave of absence from his career.

Oh, God, it wasn't about Melanie or romance after all. He knew. Her husband knew.

The note, sitting in her car after the AA meeting. Inside her locked, alarmed Mercedes, placed on the driver's seat.

Five words, cut out of a magazine. Simple. Knowing. Chilling to the bone.

You get what you deserve.

In the cold moment that followed after she read the note, her heart beating like a trapped bird in her chest, Patricia had experienced a horrible instance of prescience, where the past blended with the future and there was no way she could stop it. Don't hurt her, she'd found herself silently begging. Don't hurt Melanie. I was good this time. I swear, I swear, I have been so good.

“Pat? Come on, I thought you would be pleased.”

“Six months,” she murmured, keeping her gaze on the table. “Somewhere far away. Would we take Melanie?”

“Yes.”

“Would we …would we take Brian?”

Harper hesitated, then slowly he nodded. “But not any lovers. I'm trying, Pat. Jesus, I'm trying. But I'm not ready to go that far.”

“The whole family,” she murmured. “Going away. Someplace far. They would need more notice than a week, sweetheart. That's awfully short.”

He remained firm. “Hey, if I can find a way to get out of the hospital, so can they.”

“So next Friday?”

“Yes. Next Friday.”

She should push more, she thought. Demand to know why. She was too afraid of the answer. She whispered, “All right, darling, all right.”

María appeared in the doorway. “Dr. Sheffield here for Dr. Stokes.”

Harper looked surprised, but then he rose and placed a quick kiss on his wife's cheek. Patricia had placed the sunflowers on the patio table that morning. He touched one magenta petal. “It'll be all right,” he told her softly. “You'll see.”

He strode out of the room. Patricia was alone with her half-eaten grapefruit. She wasn't sure what had just happened. The spur-of-the-moment vacation for no good reason. Her own desperate willingness to play along.