Woman in Black (25 page)

He'd shrugged. “I could've hitchhiked.”

The glint in his eye had told her that it hadn't been an offhand response. Neal had meant to unsettle her. The question was, why? Did he hold her responsible for their current predicament?

Since then, it seemed that she'd done nothing but disappoint him. Like this business with the tree …

“Christmas is less than two weeks away,” Neal said pointedly.

“Like I need you to remind me. I can't walk into a store these days without being bombarded by Christmas displays. And if I have to listen one more time to Mel Torme singing ‘Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire,' I think I'll lose my mind.”

But if she hoped Neal would cut her some slack, it wasn't working. He didn't even appear to be listening. He sat gazing out the window, wearing a faraway look. “Remember when I was little, how you and me and Dad used to drive around on Christmas Eve and look at all the department store windows?”

She smiled at the memory. “I always brought a thermos of hot chocolate for the car,” she recalled. “And a blanket in case you got sleepy. But you never did. You were always wide awake.” It would be long past Neal's bedtime by the time they set out to make the rounds in their hired car—Saks Fifth Avenue, Macy's, Bloomingdale's, and Lord & Taylor—an hour when the sidewalks were generally deserted and they could get out and enjoy the displays without being jostled or hurried along by the crowds.

“The best were the times it was snowing,” he mused aloud. “It was fun seeing the streets all white like that. I used to pretend it was the North Pole.” Neal, wearing a small, wistful smile, went on staring out at the snowy landscape, one that was far removed, in more than just distance, from those of his more untroubled past. She waited with pent-up breath for him to say something more, something she could use to bridge the gap that had lately opened between them, but then he roused himself and went back to lacing up his boots.

I'm a bad mother
, Lila thought. Maybe she'd always been a bad mother and it was only just now becoming apparent, without Gordon to balance the equation. But that didn't mean she had to give up. “Listen, sweetie, if it means that much to you, of course we can get a tree. Though I'm not quite sure where we'd put it,” she said. Her gaze traveled around the living room, which was less than a quarter the size of the one in their old Park Avenue penthouse. Maybe if they rearranged some of the furniture, they could squeeze it in.

“Never mind.” His tone became brusque. “What's the point, if you're not into it?”

“The point is that it matters to you. And
that's
important to me.”

“Forget it, okay? It's no big deal.” From the tight jerkiness of his movements as he sat bent over, tying his shoelaces, it was obvious he was none too pleased with her.

If only she could find a way to get through to him! “I'm sorry if I've disappointed you,” she said gently. “But, sweetie, it hasn't been easy for me, either. This isn't exactly my dream job.”

“You didn't have to take it.”

“I didn't have a choice. You don't think I tried everything?” An injured tone crept into her voice.

“Yeah? Well, I guess you must have, or we wouldn't be living in this shithole,” he said with a sarcasm that went through her like a knife.

Lila felt a headache coming on, and she squeezed her eyes shut, willing it to subside. “Neal, please. Don't take it out on me. I'm just trying to get by here.”

“In case you haven't noticed, you're not the only one.” He shot her a dark look.

“I know that. I was only saying—”

Abruptly he catapulted off the sofa. “Look, can we talk about this another time? I don't want to be late for work.” Neal had found a job at a deli downtown. Full-time for now, but the owner had agreed to let him switch to half days once he started classes at the community college in nearby Hudson-on-Croton.

Lila watched him cross the room in two long strides and reach into the bifold closet for his parka. She got up to peer out the window at the fat, wind-driven flakes swirling through the air like goose down from an Olympian pillow fight. “Drive carefully,” she cautioned. “The roads might not be plowed yet.” She worried about her son more than she knew was normal. But didn't she have good reason? The unthinkable had occurred with Gordon. What was to prevent something equally horrific from happening to Neal?

The old Neal surfaced briefly in that instant, and he teased, “Don't worry, Mom. It's not the Indy 500. I promise to take it slow.”

Moments later, she sat watching from the window as he made his way down the snow-crusted steps and across the driveway to where her Taurus was parked. From behind at this distance, he might have been a youthful Gordon, with his long, lean torso and quick, impatient stride. Snowflakes caught in his hair, which was still damp from the shower, a mass of curls that would settle into soft waves once it dried. She remembered how he'd looked as a toddler fresh from the bath, pink and squirming, with his hair standing up in wet tufts all over his head. She had to remind herself that he was a grown-up now—well, almost—and capable of looking after himself. Hadn't he done just that while away at school? And he'd be leaving her again soon, next time to go off into the world.

She felt a deep tug inside at the thought.

For a long time after he drove off, she remained where she was, perched on an arm of the sofa with her coffee gone cold in its mug and her crossword puzzle lying forgotten on the table. Sundays, when she had the whole day to herself, were the hardest. The one advantage to housework was that it was mindless and repetitive, which had an oddly calming effect on her. Scrubbing toilets or mopping floors, ironing clothes or chopping vegetables, she would become lost in the rhythm of it, in much the way she imagined yogis did while meditating. It was only on days like today that her mind wandered, often down dark alleys where it was likely to get mugged by thoughts she normally sought to avoid.

Mostly what she thought about was Gordon—she fluctuated between longing for him and wanting to kick his dead body from here to Tuscaloosa—and what the future might hold for her and Neal. She thought about her brother, too, who was fighting for his life. And Abigail, who had her constantly on edge, never knowing quite what to expect.

Lately Abigail had been making an effort to be nicer to her, which had Lila confused and a little wary. The other day, she'd actually gone so far as to praise Lila for a meal she'd cooked, commenting, “I don't know when I've had pot roast this tasty. What kind of seasoning did you use?”

“Just regular old Lipton soup,” Lila told her, getting a perverse pleasure out of the surprised look this elicited.

But Abigail, instead of reacting with disdain, merely smiled. “My mother used to make it that way. I haven't had it in years.”

Lila smiled back. “Where do you think I got the recipe?”

It had been a nice moment, but Lila couldn't lose sight of the fact that she worked for Abigail. At times, the sense of despair she felt was so overwhelming that a kind of paralysis would overtake her, and on her days off, she'd be unable to do much more than drag herself out of bed.

Today was different, though. She felt so restless she thought she might jump out of her skin if she had to stay inside a moment longer. She got up and fetched her parka, tugging on her hat and gloves. Screw the weather.

It wasn't until she stepped outside that she had cause to regret the impulse. The cold hit her like a slap in the face, and she shrank into her parka like a turtle into its shell. It was the kind of cold she associated with Eskimos and ice floes, mountain climbers with frostbitten toes, entire blocks of red states buried under eight or nine feet of snow. Even though Rose Hill wasn't exactly off the grid—in good weather it was an hour's drive from Manhattan, just as Abigail had said—it was like a different world. The icy wind, without high-rises to block it, cut cruelly across the open stretches of pasture and howled down off the mountain. And the snow, which on city streets and sidewalks would have been plowed or shoveled away by now, accumulated at an unbridled rate: It was already well on its way to obliterating the tire tracks in the driveway, and it lay thick as the frosting on one of Abigail's cakes along the fence rails and the branches of the fir trees overhead.

Downtown Stone Harbor might be a relative hub of activity, with its shops and restaurants, and the bed-and-breakfasts that filled with tourists on weekends, but out here it was as desolate in the wintertime as the arctic tundra. The isolation was so complete that it could lead to cabin fever … or worse. She'd heard on the local news the other day about an elderly farmer who'd lived alone and who'd taken a fall out in his barn that had left him with a broken hip. Unable to crawl inside where it was warm, much less reach a phone to call for help, he'd frozen to death. With no one nearby to check on him, it had been days before his body had been discovered. The tragic story had left Lila feeling vaguely unsettled the rest of the day.

She was picking her way along the snowy drive, following the quickly disappearing tire tracks left by her car, when she spotted a lone figure walking toward her, bundled in a knit cap and parka. Karim. He'd become a familiar sight over the past couple of weeks, and a welcome one, she had to admit. Whenever there was something too heavy for her to lift or a repair that she couldn't manage herself—a leaky pipe, a stuck door, a kitchen appliance gone kaput—he materialized like a genie out of a bottle. The other day, when her car wouldn't start, he'd quickly determined the cause, and after a trip to the automotive store for a new fan belt, he'd had it running again in no time. Today was no different. He was carrying a bag of rock salt in one hand and a snow shovel in the other. Never mind that it was supposed to be his day off.

“For me? Really, you shouldn't have,” she called out in jest.

His brown eyes sparkled, and his breath formed frosty plumes that funneled up into the chill air. “Never let it be said that I abandoned a damsel in distress.” His smile alone was enough to melt the snow away, she thought.

However gray her mood was, Karim always had a way of lightening it. Partly it was because he was always so upbeat. He hadn't let the tragedy he'd known eclipse his natural optimism. It was almost enough to make Lila believe that she might get through her own season in hell.

Even so, she feared she was becoming too dependent on him. “So you've come to dig me out, have you? Well, as you can see, I got out just fine without your help,” she replied with a laugh, stamping against the snowy pavement to knock loose the clots of snow stuck to her boots.

“Good, then you can give me a hand.” Karim plunked down the bag of salt at her feet and went to work shoveling the walk.

“How much more of this do you think we'll get?” Lila asked after she'd finished salting the drive. She squinted up at the fat, wind-driven snowflakes swirling down ever more rapidly from a sky the color of the dust bunnies that she had become adept at ferreting out from under beds.

“Not much. Maybe another inch or so.” He paused in the midst of his shoveling to look over at her, appearing barely winded from his exertions. “Why? Were you planning on going somewhere?”

“I was thinking of taking a walk.”

“In this weather?” He pointedly eyed her boots, an old pair that had served her well when she'd lived in the city but weren't really suited to extremes like this. But she'd long since given away all her old snow gear, from her family's ski vacations, and she couldn't afford to buy new, sturdier boots, so these would have to do.

“I wasn't planning on going very far, just a little way up into the woods.” She gestured toward the snow-covered hillside that lay beyond the cultivated grounds of Rose Hill. It comprised the northernmost end of Abigail and Kent's property—a forested tract that stretched for more than a mile. Lila had gone hiking there once before, though admittedly the weather hadn't been so inclement then.

Karim wore a dubious look. “It's easy to get lost up in there, especially when the trails are covered in snow.”

“I'll sprinkle bread crumbs then, so I'll be able to find my way back,” she said facetiously. It wasn't that she was dying to trudge through the snow on such a cold day; it had become a point of pride.

“The birds would only eat them,” he replied, a twinkle in his eye.

“Well, then, I'll just have to take my chances. Besides, there's something I have to do.” The idea had come to her as she'd been salting the drive. “I was going to buy a Christmas tree, but it occurred to me that the woods are full of them. You don't think Kent and Abby would mind, do you?”

He smiled and shook his head. “I'm certain they wouldn't. In fact, why don't I help you find one? You'll need help cutting it down.”

“I can't ask you to work on your day off.”

“Who said it would be work? Consider it a favor. Just wait until after I've finished here. I should be done in another hour or so. The snow is supposed to let up by then.”

“Really, I can manage,” she protested.

“Do you know how to operate a chain saw?”

“Well, no. But—”

He nodded, as if to say,
I thought not
. “In that case, I'll meet you back here in an hour.” He was gone before she could offer any further protest.

As predicted, the storm had let up by the time they set out, and as they made their way up the wooded slope behind Abigail's house, just a few stray snowflakes drifted down through the cake-frosted branches overhead. The only sound besides the twittering of birds and the soft breath of the wind in the trees was that of her and Karim's boots punching through the thick crust of snow that covered the nearly obliterated trail. It was so peaceful, they might have been the only two people on the planet.