Читать книгу Crimson Rain - Meg O'Brien - Страница 12

It was the day after Christmas, and Lacey was stretched out on the sofa when Paul let himself into the apartment. She was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, and had kicked her shoes off. One leg was slung over the back of the sofa. In her white crew socks, she looked like a child. She was even watching the cartoon channel, like a kid on a Saturday morning.

She picked up the remote and flicked the TV off as Paul entered and hung his jacket over the back of a chair. He noted that an open bag of potato chips lay on the coffee table, and a can of Pepsi had left wet rings on the glass top.

That was one of the things he liked about being here, the fact that he could mess things up a bit. Lacey was easygoing that way, while Gina, probably because of her work as an interior designer, liked rooms neat and tidy. Even the magazines on the coffee table in their living room were chosen to look good, rather than for their reading content.

In the beginning, Paul had appreciated that Gina kept such a nice house. In time he began to weary, however, of always having to pick things up, especially when his mind was on other matters.

Before coming here, Paul had been prepared to tell Lacey they should cool things off, not see each other as much anymore. Her presence at Midnight Mass had been a bit too close for comfort. Paul honestly did not want to hurt Gina or Rachel. For that reason, he had never taken Lacey to Soleil, unwilling to risk having any of the employees gossip about them—gossip that might get back to Gina.

But now, seeing her like this, his heart melted. He had missed her spontaneity the past few days, the quick flashes of humor, her slight Southern accent from growing up in Atlanta. As much as she had tried to do away with it, Lacey had told him, she never was able to. “Guess it’s inbred,” she had said, laughing. “Take it or leave it.” Paul had taken it. And loved it.

“That was close the other night,” he said, sitting on the edge of the sofa beside her. In spite of himself, he couldn’t resist stroking her breast through the tight T-shirt and feeling excited as her nipples became hard in response to his touch.

“You’re sure in a hurry to get started today,” she teased, pulling a pillow off the back of the sofa and smacking him with it.

He drew back, laughing, and took the pillow, putting it behind her head. Gently pushing a strand of her hair behind an ear, he said, “Actually, I didn’t have that in mind for tonight.”

“Oh?”

His finger paused at her ear, then traced her cheekbone. Finally he took her hand and sighed. “Lacey, sweetheart, I think we should talk.”

She sat up, pulling her hand out of his. Taking another sofa pillow, she held it tight against her. “I’m not sure I like the sound of that.”

Paul tugged at his tie, loosening it. Suddenly he was having trouble breathing. He felt as if he were on a precipice, about to do something that would change his life in ways he might be sorry for later.

“I, uh…I just think we should take this a bit slower. I mean, you know, spend less time together…”

His voice shook when she didn’t respond. “The thing is, Rachel’s home, and since the accident the other night, I think I should spend more time with her.”

He had told Lacey about the accident this morning, on the phone, when he called to say he’d be coming by. She hadn’t expected him on Christmas Day, of course, but it had been agreed upon that he would come here the day after, while Gina and Rachel were hitting the stores for sales. He would bring his present—a gold necklace—to her then, and spend the afternoon with her.

“Of course you need to stay home and take care of Rachel,” Lacey said now. “I understand completely.”

Her eyes, however, filled with tears. “That’s not what this is about, though,” she said in a low, husky voice. “You want to break up with me. You’re saying goodbye.”

“No! No, not at all,” Paul said, though he wondered if that were true. His motivations weren’t completely clear, even to him.

He ran a hand through his hair, which left the cowlick he tried so hard to gel down every morning standing upright. He knew this, and it irritated him. He wanted to feel in charge here today, not like a barefoot boy.

“Lacey,” he said, sounding more accusative than he’d meant to, “what was all that on Christmas Eve? At the church? Why were you there?”

She dried her tears with the back of her hand, then gave him an amazed look. Laughing shortly, she said, “Why was I there? Paul, Sacred Heart is my parish church! I might as well ask you why you and your wife and daughter were there. The truth is, I couldn’t have been more shocked. And you may remember that I left the moment I saw you.”

He had to agree that was true, but added, “I guess I never knew you were Catholic.”

She bristled. “Well, all you had to do was ask.”

He took in her large green eyes, brimming with tears, and heard the wounded tone in her voice. She’s right, he thought. We’ve never talked about our lives outside this apartment. That was a rule they had made. Correction—he had made, as if the less he knew about her, the less she infringed upon his life with Gina and Rachel.

The truth was, he had been a thoughtless, selfish bastard, thinking only of himself.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I guess my nerves have been on edge.”

Standing, he walked to the window that looked out on the street, three stories down. From here, he could almost see his home near the top of Queen Anne Hill. Gina and Rachel were still out shopping, but he could picture them there later, waiting for him to come home and do all the things Rachel wanted to squeeze in before going back to school. He felt pulled in so many directions it was physically painful.

Turning back, he said, “I really am sorry, Lacey. I haven’t been very thoughtful of you.” He made an attempt. “You go to Midnight Mass every Christmas, then?”

“Just about. It’s the only time I do go to church. No, that’s not quite true. I go on Easter, sometimes. It doesn’t have to be a Catholic church, though. As long as they have palms and lilies and a choir, I’m fine.” She smiled.

Paul returned her smile and felt the tensions leave him. “It was just such a shock, seeing you there. It threw me off balance.”

“I’ll bet. You were afraid I’d come up to you afterward and tell your wife who I was,” she guessed.

“No, of course not.” But he flushed, and he knew that she knew.

Lacey reached for the potato chips and popped one into her mouth, chewing it with her usual gusto for food. Washing it down with a gulp of Pepsi, she said, “And what were you doing there, Mr. Bradley? Churchgoing doesn’t seem like your usual M.O.”

“I…uh, well, Gina and I…” He flushed.

“Oh. Never mind, I get it. You were married there, huh?”

He didn’t answer, and she said, “Now that I think of it, it figures, with her growing up in that neighborhood. So Midnight Mass at Sacred Heart is a family tradition?”

“Yes.”

“And there I was, all of a sudden,” Lacey continued with a grin. “Your worst nightmare.”

“Yes…well, no, I wouldn’t put it that way.”

Standing, she walked over to him and pushed him lightly on both shoulders. “Well, I would. Look, Paul, we’ve talked about this before. You know you don’t have to worry about me. You have to spend holidays with your family, and I understand that. Sure, sometimes it hurts. And I’ll admit that at Midnight Mass I couldn’t stay any longer, once I saw you there with them. I can’t tell you how jealous I felt. But, hey, look at us now. You’re here with me, for heaven’s sake—not them.”

Looking into those beautiful green eyes, the tremulous red lips, he hadn’t the heart to tell her he couldn’t stay. He thought about the fact that he had told Gina and Rachel he was going to the office, and that something urgent had come up.

How many lies had he told since meeting Lacey? How many were still to come before his wife began to sense they were lies and his entire world collapsed around him?

His guilt was nearly overwhelming. But when Lacey put her arms around him, stroking his temple with her fingertips and the hollow at his throat with her tongue, everything else flew out the window. All he could think of then was the way it was going to feel to hold her, to have her warm and naked against him.

There was no way he could ever explain this to anyone, this need for Lacey even as he loved his wife and daughter more than anything else on earth. It was if he were two men, one for Lacey and one for them. He knew that whatever this thing was that had him in its grip, it had to be a sickness. He just didn’t know how to cure it—nor, at this moment, did he honestly want to. He simply wanted it to go on and on, and for nothing bad to ever happen in his life again.

Three days after Christmas, Gina sat with Rachel at the kitchen breakfast bar. They had barely touched their coffee, even though it was a new blend they’d picked up at a café down the street and had looked forward to trying out.

“I’m just saying you’re living in a dream world,” Rachel argued. “You don’t see things the way they really are.”

Gina felt attacked, and responded in kind. “Well, my dear, everyone’s reality is different. That’s something you’ll learn, perhaps, as you grow older—and, hopefully, wiser.”

“Mom, don’t give me that ‘different reality’ thing. I know we all see things from our own perspective. I just think yours is really skewed.”

Gina sighed. “And just what brought all this up?”

Rachel shook her head and didn’t answer.

Gina picked up her coffee cup and took it to the sink, rinsing it out. “If you’re not going to answer me, we can hardly have an intelligent discussion, Rachel.”

And why the hell couldn’t this visit of her daughter’s just have been fun? Why was she trying to stir things up this time?

It reminded her of a period when Rachel was sixteen, and seemed intent on ruining the good spirits of everyone around her. The Spoiler, they had called her then, though not in a mean way, and not to her face. Paul and Gina would lie in bed at night and try to figure out what was bothering their daughter, and why she had to cast a negative light on everything.

Gina frowned. Her daughter was no longer a teenager. It was time to grow up.

“I’m going upstairs to collect the laundry,” she said, drying her hands.

“The laundry can wait,” Rachel snapped. “Mom, I’m talking about Dad.”

Carefully Gina hung the dish towel on the decorative cherry-wood rod affixed to the upper cabinet, next to the sink. She had put it there the day they moved in, rather than have towels all over the counters, gathering bacteria and looking messy.

Sometimes she thought that she liked a neat house because it was the only control she still had over her life.

“Your father?” she said, keeping her back to Rachel. “I thought we already went through all that.”

“Not quite,” Rachel said. She rubbed her face the same way she’d seen her father do for years when irritated, as if the source of the irritation could be rubbed away. “Mom, what if he’s seeing somebody?”

“Seeing—” Gina’s expression went from an incredulous smile to a glare in a matter of seconds. “If you mean another woman, Rachel, that’s ridiculous. Your father is much too busy to have time for that, in the first place. And in the second place, he just isn’t the type.”

She was hearing her mother’s words, however—All men are the type—and that took some of the force from her tone.

Rachel just looked at her, and after a moment, Gina said, “I’m going upstairs to get the laundry now.”

Rachel stared into her coffee cup, making swirls in the cool, creamy liquid with a finger. Round and round, round and round, down and down…like life, she thought. Round and round…then, at the last dizzying moment, down and down.

Rachel dumped her jacket and purse onto the chair in Victoria Lessing’s office, then asked to use her bathroom. Victoria was on the phone but waved to her, whispering, “Sure. I’ll be off in a minute.”

The psychiatrist’s bathroom was as elegant as her office, both of which had recently been redecorated. There were gold fixtures and an ornate mirror, trimmed in gold.

Looks like an expensive antique, Rachel thought. I wonder if she got it from Dad. Towels were in a soft lilac, the only color in the room except for a five-foot-high plant in the palm family. Now, that—that’s more like Mom’s style.

Standing before the mirror, Rachel thought she looked older than her twenty-one years. Fine lines were already beginning at the corners of her eyes, and there were dark circles that no amount of concealer had been able to cover.

Well, the past few weeks hadn’t been easy. Add to that the accident the other night and the egg-sized lump on her noggin, it was a wonder she hadn’t turned gray.

She washed her hands for a full twenty seconds, hoping to ward off the many germs and new viruses that were all about these days. It seemed she was forever trying to wash them away, and God only knew what she might have picked up in the coffee shop that she and Gina had stopped at on the way here.

Vicki must be worried about germs, too, she thought, because there were plastic disposable gloves in her wastebasket. Rachel smiled. Vicky had beautiful hands that didn’t show her age. She probably wore gloves to bed, too, the way hand models did.

When Rachel walked back into the office, Vicky was still on the phone. “All right, all right,” she was saying. “I’ll let you know as soon as I know anything. Listen, I have to go.”

Victoria hung up the phone and smoothed her blond hair, which hung straight to her shoulders today. Golly, Rachel thought, she looks almost sexy. Idly she wondered who the boyfriend was. There must be one. When she sat at her antique desk like that, she looked so…pure, was the only word that came to Rachel. Like someone in a painting.

Victoria’s personal life, however, had always been a mystery. On one slender finger glittered a diamond and sapphire ring that she had worn ever since Rachel could remember. It wasn’t on her engagement finger, though, and so far as Rachel knew, she had never married.

Rachel took a seat and settled her jacket over her shoulders to ward off the nervous chill she was feeling. Opening up to Victoria wasn’t as bad as trying to communicate with her parents, but even so, it wasn’t something she looked forward to.

She waited as Victoria took a stack of papers from her desk and slipped them into a drawer. Her attention was caught by something new on Victoria’s desk—a bronze statue of a frog with a golden coin on its tongue. The tongue, too, was made of gold.