Mad River Road (27 page)

Jamie shook her head in an effort not to remember it, but already the cast of characters was moving into position, and the scene was being replayed before her tired eyes: In another of her ill-advised, last-ditch efforts to save her marriage, Jamie had invited friends of Mark’s—Bob and Sharon Lasky, Pam and Ron Hutchinson—over for dinner. Naturally Mark was late, having stopped off at his mother’s first. “I come bearing gifts,” he’d explained to their guests as he strolled casually into their apartment half an hour after they’d arrived. “My mother’s famous lemon meringue pie.”

“Only my favorite thing on earth,” Bob said.

Jamie had smiled, relegating the chocolate cake she’d made that afternoon to the freezer, determined to give her mother-in-law the benefit of the doubt, to prove to her husband that she was capable of compromise.

After dinner, they’d sat around talking and watching the Miss America pageant on TV. Mark had made some stupid comment about wanting to go out with one of the contestants, a big-haired, big-bosomed campaigner for world peace whose enormous dimples bracketed a mouth filled with Chiclets-size teeth.

“You’re kidding me,” Pam had said, laughing. “What on earth would you talk about?”

Mark had looked genuinely horrified. “I don’t want to
talk
to her,” he’d exclaimed to much laughter.

“Did you like dinner?” Jamie had asked later, after
everyone had gone and they were getting ready for bed. She’d made a chicken with cumberland sauce, and everyone, including Mark, had had second helpings.

“It was okay.”

“Just okay?”

“What is this, a fishing expedition? You looking for compliments?”

“Just that you never said anything.”

“I said it was okay. Dessert was fabulous,” he added, climbing into bed and pulling the blanket up around his shoulders, a clear signal he wasn’t interested in making love. “Don’t forget to call and thank my mother.”

“She knew I was making a chocolate cake.”

“What?”

“I spoke to her today. I told her we were having company tonight and that I was making a chocolate cake for dessert.”

“What are you saying? That she did it on purpose?”

“Why would she make a dessert when she already knew I was making one?” Jamie persisted.

“I don’t know. Maybe to be nice? Because she knows it’s Bob’s favorite? Because she figured you’d fuck it up.”

“I didn’t fuck it up.”

“You fuck everything up.”

“That’s not fair.”

“That’s not fair?”
he repeated. “What are you—five years old? Christ, Jamie, do you ever listen to some of the stupid things you say?” He was suddenly out of bed, pacing the floor in the boxer shorts he’d begun wearing to bed every night. Another signal he wasn’t interested in making love. “My mother makes you a fabulous dessert, which most people would accept for the kind gesture it
was, and you make it out to be an act of sabotage. Hell, she goes out of her way to be nice to you.…”

“She goes out of her way to make me look incompetent.”

“You
are
incompetent,” Mark shouted. “Besides being an ungrateful bitch.”

The words slapped at Jamie’s cheeks, brought tears to her eyes.

There followed more words, more accusations, more tears. Finally, mercifully, there was silence. Ultimately Mark had gotten dressed, thrown some clothes into an overnight bag, and stormed from the apartment. No need to ask him where he’s going, Jamie thought, falling into bed, eventually drifting into a restless sleep.

The twisting of a key in the front door woke her about an hour later. “Mark?” she asked, sitting up in bed, her eyes swollen almost shut with her tears.

Without a word, Laura Dennison walked into the bedroom and flipped on the overhead light. “I’ve come for my jewelry,” she said, as if this were the most natural of announcements.

Jamie couldn’t believe her ears. She must be dreaming, she thought, pinching herself underneath her blankets.

“What?”

“The wedding ring, the bracelet, the earrings,” Mrs. Dennison enumerated.

“Surely this can wait till morning.”

“I’d rather get this out of the way now, if you don’t mind.”

“I
do
mind.”

“They’re family heirlooms, as you know. I’ll sue you if you try to keep them.”

Numb with anger, fatigue, and disbelief, Jamie climbed out of bed, pulling off her wedding band as she walked toward the dresser. Wordlessly, she dropped the ring into her mother-in-law’s outstretched palm, along with the gold bracelet and the pearl-and-gold earrings she’d worn just this evening. I
do
mind, she repeated silently as her mother-in-law dropped the jewelry into her purse and marched from the room.

“I mind very much,” Jamie said now, staring at the hateful woman as she slept. “The earrings are in her dresser,” she told Brad. “Top drawer, at the back.”

B
rad traversed the plush, white broadloom to the dresser in one graceful arc, almost like a dancer, Jamie thought. As if his entire life he’d been breaking into people’s homes as they slept. As if rifling through their belongings and stealing their most prized possessions was something with which he was intimately familiar. As if it was all in a night’s work. He was a little too comfortable with the situation, she thought, as he seized the ornate brass handle of the polished wood dresser and pulled open its top drawer, exposing its contents to the scrutiny of the night. Just as he’d looked a little too comfortable with a knife in his hands last night in Tifton.

Jamie’s eyes had grown slowly more used to the darkness, and she had no trouble making out even the smallest details of the room: the myriad shapes of the glass perfume bottles that lined the top of the dresser; the silver-embossed title of the softcover book on the night table beside the bed; the small crack in the pale blue-and-white wallpaper between the door frame and the ceiling. Although maybe she was just remembering this last
detail. She couldn’t be sure. She’d worked so hard to blot out everything about her time here.

And now here she was, right back in the middle of it.

And what else? What else had she gotten herself into?

Beside her, Mrs. Dennison stirred, made a slight munching sound with her mouth. For a second, Jamie feared she was about to wake up. Nature giving her a middle-of-the-night wake-up call. But she only flipped onto her left side, her right arm reflexively reaching out to pull the comforter back up around her shoulders. What would she do if Mrs. Dennison were to wake up right now? Or maybe she was already awake. Maybe she was just pretending to be asleep.

“You’d like to kill her, wouldn’t you?” Brad said from beside the dresser, fistfuls of the woman’s intimate apparel overflowing his cupped hands.

“What? No! Of course not.” A line of sweat suddenly materialized across Jamie’s forehead, like a fever breaking. She was thinking of the switchblade in his pocket.

“Bullshit,” Brad countered. “It’s written all over your face.” He laughed. “Your hatred for this woman glows in the dark.” He laughed again, although this time the laugh was silent.

Jamie was about to protest but stopped when she realized he was right. She did hate Laura Dennison.

“You could do it, you know,” Brad continued, his voice a seductive whisper. “All you’d have to do is grab that pillow next to her head and hold it over her face for a couple of minutes. It’d be so easy.”

Jamie stared down at her former mother-in-law. Was Brad seriously trying to encourage her to commit murder?
Would he really have slit that boy’s throat?
Don’t be ridiculous,
she told herself, forcing the troublesome thought from her brain. “Let’s just get the earrings and get out of here.”

Brad dropped the bras and panties in his hands to the top of the dresser, his hand sweeping soundlessly across the inside of the top drawer. “There’s nothing here.”

“There’s no jewelry box?”

“See for yourself.”

Jamie tiptoed to his side, knowing even before she reached her hand inside the drawer she’d find nothing. “She must have moved it,” she muttered, hating the sleeping woman even more. You couldn’t let anything be easy, could you? she was thinking as she returned the underwear to its former position. Silently, she searched through the bureau’s second drawer, and then the third, coming up empty. “Okay, it’s not here. Let’s just leave.”

“Nah. It’s gotta be somewhere. Where would she keep it?”

“I don’t know. My heart is racing; my head is pounding. I think I’m going to be sick,” Jamie rattled off, her body suddenly acutely aware of her predicament. You’ve overstayed your welcome, her body was telling her. You’re pushing your luck, courting disaster.

Get out while you still can
.

Brad’s arms were immediately around her, his voice soft in her ear, advising her to calm down, take deep breaths, pull herself together.

“I’m going to be sick,” Jamie repeated forcefully, feeling the bile rise in her throat. She tore out of his arms and vaulted toward the en suite bathroom, pulling the door closed after her and flipping on the light, temporarily blinded by the eight spotlights framing the tall, rectangular-shaped mirror over the sink. “Oh, God,” she
said to the terrified young woman trapped inside the glass, gasping for air. “What the hell are you doing?”

And then she saw it. The ivory-inlaid, red enamel jewel box that housed the so-called family heirlooms. It was sitting on the bathroom counter at right angles to the sink, beside a plethora of antiwrinkle creams and expensive moisturizers. A large bottle of hair spray stood on its other side, like a sentinel, and beside it a round, glass bowl stuffed with cotton balls. An impressive collection of makeup brushes, foundations, lipsticks, and blushes occupied the balance of the counter space. This from a woman who’d once criticized her for wearing too much mascara. “Jealous old bat,” Jamie whispered now, her fear of being sick suddenly subsiding. She opened the door a crack, wincing when she saw a streak of light cut across Mrs. Dennison’s face, like the blade of Brad’s knife. “Brad,” she whispered. “It’s here. I found it.”

There was no response.

Jamie stepped back into the bedroom, closing the bathroom door behind her, her eyes quickly readjusting to the dark. “Brad?” Was he hiding? She braced herself for his sudden reappearance, her shoulders hunching around her ears in anticipation of his popping up like a jack-in-the-box and slicing at her hair. But nobody jumped out at her, and the only sound she heard was the steady hum of Mrs. Dennison’s breathing.

Where was he?

She heard a noise and she froze, sensing Mrs. Dennison leave her bed to inch up behind her. Dear God, what could she say to the woman? How could she even begin to explain what she was doing here? But when she glanced over at the bed, she saw that her former mother-in-law
was still sleeping soundly. She spun around just as Brad appeared in the doorway.

“Where the hell have you been?” she demanded angrily.

“Ssh,” Brad cautioned, moving back into the room and nodding toward the sleeping figure.

“Where did you go?”

He shrugged, pulled a tall, brass candlestick holder out from behind his back. “Thought we’d have some fun.”

“Fun? What are you talking about?”

He put the candlestick holder on the dresser. “That ought to freak her out pretty good when she wakes up.”

“Then she’ll know for sure someone was here. She’ll realize her earrings were stolen.”

“You found them?” Brad asked, smiling in anticipation.

Jamie looked toward the bathroom.

“In there?” Already he was walking toward the small room, pulling open the door.

Light flooded the bedroom.

“Brad, for God’s sake, close the door.”

“Stop worrying,” he said, leaving it open. “Zorro’s sound asleep. Where are the earrings?”

Jamie hurried to the bathroom, deliberately closing the door after her and grabbing the enamel box from the counter, lifting its lid.

“Wow,” Brad said with a low whistle. “Ain’t this a pretty sight.”

Ain’t this a pretty sight
, Jamie repeated in silent disbelief, wondering when the southern good old boy had replaced the sophisticated computer programmer and software designer she’d run away with. She forced her eyes to the small but impressive collection of jewelry in the box. Several gold bracelets, a delicate necklace made up of tiny
diamond flowers, a star sapphire ring, a pair of diamond studs, some silver hoops, the gold-and-pearl earrings, a wide, antique, gold, wedding band.
Her
wedding band, she found herself thinking.
Her
gold-and-pearl earrings.

“Take them,” Brad said, as if her thoughts were etched across her forehead in bright fluorescent letters. “They’re yours.”

With trembling fingers, Jamie lifted the earrings out of the box, before returning the box to the counter. What in God’s name was she doing?

“Put them on,” Brad directed.

Jamie brushed her hair away from her ears, pushing first one earring, and then the other, through the tiny holes in her lobes, then admiring the result in the mirror.

“Back where they belong,” Brad said, and Jamie couldn’t help but smile.

He was right. The earrings
were
back where they belonged. She’d paid for them with two years of her life. She’d earned the right to wear them.

“They suit you.” He came up behind her and kissed the side of her neck, his arms wrapping tightly around her rib cage. “You look beautiful.”

She
did
look beautiful, Jamie thought. The sad little girl who wore her fear like a heavy veil had disappeared. In her place stood a confident young woman wearing gold and pearls. “We should get out of here.”

“You’re not going to leave those diamonds behind, are you?”

“Those were never mine,” Jamie explained.

“They are now.” Brad dropped the diamond studs into the palm of her hand.

“No. I can’t. I don’t want them.”

“Sure you do.”

The cold stones felt strangely warm against her skin. She felt them burning holes in her flesh, like tiny drops of acid, and quickly returned them to the jewelry box. “No. I don’t. Please. Let’s just get out of here.”