Maggy's Child (17 page)

She searched his eyes to see if he remembered, and saw that he did. His gaze held her immobile, reminding her silently of just how much they had shared. Yet he never touched her. His arms stayed crossed over his chest. And she never touched him. Her hands were thrust deep into the pockets of her jacket. A distance of a good two feet separated them, but Maggy felt as though every part of their bodies were in contact. They stood unmoving, hazel-green eyes boring into brown, a pair of small dark human silhouettes suspended against the pale stone of the cliff, for an instant out of time.

While their souls embraced.

Without words or touch or anything except the memories in her eyes, Maggy finally welcomed Nick home.

And he told her how glad he was to be back.

“W
ait a minute, folks. If you think I’m sliding down this here mountain on my butt, you’ve got another think comin’. No, sirree.”

Link’s voice, heavy with disapproval as he crouched at the cliff edge peering down at them, roused them from their reverie. As Nick’s eyes left hers to focus on his brother, Maggy felt strangely disoriented. Dizzy, almost. As if she’d been journeying in another world and now found herself rudely returned to reality.

“He’s afraid of heights,” Nick said to her, but loud enough so that Link could hear.

“I’m smart, is what I am,” Link growled in reply. “Only a lovesick fool with more hair than brains would go shimmying down that cliff on that little gal’s say-so. You miss that ledge, and you can kiss your ass good-bye.”

“I told you, he’s afraid of heights,” Nick said to Maggy.

“Damn it, Nicky, you’re not going to shame me into doin’ this. I’ll wait for you in the car.”

“But, Link, we’ll probably be gone for a couple of hours,” Maggy recovered enough to protest.

“So I’ll grab a burger and be back. The car’ll be waitin’ where it is now.”

“See ya, bro.” Nick did not sound particularly upset.

Link’s reply was a grunt. Then he stood up and disappeared from view.

Maggy was suddenly very conscious of the fact that she
was all alone with Nick. The realization made her nervous.

“Come on then,” she said gruffly, and, turning, headed toward the north end of the ledge where it narrowed into a rocky footpath. The path, a little less than two feet wide, had been carved into the stone by a combination of man and nature some hundred years before, according to Herd, who had shown it to Maggy the summer after David was born. It snaked down the cliff in a rough Z-shape, eventually depositing the faithful not ten feet from where
The Lady Dancer
was docked.

“Christ, this is suicide,” Nick muttered behind her. Maggy glanced around. A faint grin appeared and hovered around her mouth as she watched him cautiously follow her onto the path. His left side hugged the cliff, and his eyes focused on the rocky trail just in front of his feet.

“It’s safer than it looks. I come this way all the time.”

“I always knew you were crazy.”

There was silence for a few minutes after that while Maggy blithely trod the route she had covered many times before and Nick inched his way after her. Then Maggy peered back over her shoulder again.

“What did Link mean by calling you a lovesick fool?” The question popped out of its own volition, but she wouldn’t have called it back if she could have. She wanted—no, needed—to know.

Nick glanced up at her for an instant before returning his attention to his feet. “That I was getting his goat. He wanted to get mine back.”

“But why a
lovesick
fool?”

Nick glanced up at her again. She had twisted around, watching him, and their eyes met. His foot hit a rock, dislodging it. He swore and froze as it skittered away from his feet, to roll over the edge of the path and plummet toward the creek below.

“Magdalena, I’m two-hundred-odd feet in the air with
only a tiny little ribbon of rock standing between me and eternity. Could we talk about this on solid ground?”

“Oh. Sure.”

There was silence between them after that. Maggy wasn’t altogether sorry to be cut off. She knew she was tampering with something that was better left alone, but like Pandora with her box, temptation was almost impossible to resist. Why shouldn’t she talk about feelings with Nick—just for tonight?

Because feelings, like memories, were too damned dangerous to play around with, she warned herself savagely.

Maggy reached the ground and turned to wait for Nick. She watched as he came down the path, moving slowly and carefully, bracing himself against the solid rock wall. The moonlight touched his hair, adding blue glints to the rich black waves. It washed the hard planes and angles of his face with silver. Clad in his elegant suit with his face turned away from her, he did not look like her Nick at all.

Of course, she reminded herself, he wasn’t. He had stopped being “her” Nick twelve years before.

Then he reached the ground and glanced up, grinning as he saw her watching him. Maggy met his eyes and realized a fundamental truth: in the only way that mattered, he hadn’t changed at all. He still occupied a room in her heart that had never, could never, belong to anyone else.

“I just have one question: how the hell do we get back up?” he asked as he joined her.

She clamped down hard on the emotion that was starting to bubble to the surface. Allowing herself to fall in love with Nick again could very well be the bomb that exploded her life. And David’s. She must never forget David.

“Oh, we go up the other path. Down the creek, over the wall, and through the woods.” Pardonably proud of
her apparent insouciance, Maggy was already walking across the narrow dirt road that allowed the occasional pickup truck access to the dock as she replied.

“Are you telling me there’s another path? One that doesn’t involve a near-suicidal climb down a sheer cliff?”

“Yes.” Maggy smiled sunnily at him over her shoulder. “But this one’s much faster.”

“Shit. Next time I’ll take the overland route.”

He was right behind her. Unable to help herself, Maggy grinned but didn’t reply. As long as she remembered that Nick was, could be, no more to her than a very dear old friend, she would be fine.

“So, you want to talk about why Link thinks I’m a lovesick fool?” He spoke nearly in her ear when she was only a few paces from the dock. Maggy jumped, startled, then turned to face him, backing up a pace, shaking her head.

“No, I don’t.”

His eyes narrowed.

“It was a mistake to ask,” she said hurriedly, wrapping her arms around herself to ward him off, though again he’d made no move to touch her. His hands were thrust deep into his pants pockets. “Being with you—brings back old memories. Old times. You know. That dance.” She took a deep breath. “For a little while there, I guess I forgot I was married. With a child.”

She made that point to underline it in her own mind. David, David—he was both her reason for keeping her present life intact, and her talisman against exploding it.

“So you’re telling me you choose ol’ Lyle, huh? Whether you love him or not.” Nick’s response was surprisingly mild. Her eyes met his, then fell. He looked pensive, not angry—but she felt as if her heart was being wrung.

“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. And—I think I’d better go see
Tia
Gloria alone. If you hurry, you can probably still catch Link.”

“I haven’t laid a hand on you, have I?” He pointed this out in a perfectly reasonable tone.

“I—no.”

“So what are you worrying about? You’re not being an unfaithful wife just because you’re standing here in the dark talking to me. Are you?”

“No.” He was confusing the issue, as he’d always managed to confuse the issue. Nick had always been the slickest talker she’d ever known. A moment ago, she’d been so sure that she knew what to do for the best. But now …

“We’re old friends, remember? Practically family. And you’re taking me to see more family. What’s wrong with that?”

“Lyle wouldn’t like it.” The objection was wrenched out of her before she could catch it. She waited for Nick to say “To hell with Lyle” as he had before. In a way, she would almost welcome a quarrel. To make parting with him easy …

“So don’t tell him,” Nick said, neatly taking the wind out of her sails. Maggy pursed her lips.

“So are we going to see
Tia
Gloria or not? You have to get rid of your present, remember.”

Her eyes widened, and one hand moved automatically to rest over the items in her jacket. “How did you know?”

“I can read you like a book, Magdalena, remember?” Then he grinned. “Besides, I felt the things when I grabbed you back in the woods.”

“Cheater.” But she had to smile, too.

“So?” Nick’s brows lifted. “Do we go or not?”

Maggy hesitated.

“Don’t worry, fair maiden, you’re safe with me.” His stagy whisper made Maggy laugh again.

“You’re impossible. Come on,” she said and turned away, already knowing that she was making a mistake.

But she simply did not have the strength of will—or the time—at that moment to deal with Nick. He was a
bulldog when it came to getting what he wanted, and she was weak, emotionally, just at present, where he was concerned. Besides, she had to get the tape and pictures to a safe place and get home again before she was missed.

Not that there was one chance in a million that she would be missed. But where Lyle was concerned, she didn’t even like those odds.

The soft rush of the quarter-mile-distant river and the louder lapping of the creek nearly at her feet overlay the other sounds of the night. Glancing to her left, Maggy could just make out the serene darkness of the mighty Ohio as it flowed past Willow Creek’s mouth. The unmistakable signs of the river’s nearness permeated the air: the fishy smell, the dampness of the breeze, the sound of a barge horn floating over the water.

The moon had risen so that it now floated at a 45-degree angle in its setting of midnight-blue velvet sky. It was reflected in the dark mirror of the water, along with dozens of tiny twinkling stars, so that the night sky seemed to stretch on without end.

The opposite bank of the creek was wooded and quiet, with no cliff such as the one on which Windermere was built. That property belonged to another twenty-acre estate, Hagan’s Bluff, but the huge brick house was located far away from the creek, and anyway it was empty. Old Mrs. Hagan, a widow, had died in the early part of the fall. The property would soon be up for sale. The vegetation across the water was thick and tangled, showing no signs of having been touched by human hands for years except for the path that led down to the small but shipshape aluminum dock. Mrs. Hagan had a teenage grandson whose passion was boating, and she had had the dock kept up for him. Two boats were tied up there still, one about the size of
The Lady Dancer
and one a little larger. Both were Fiberglas, and new-looking, their hulls gleaming brightly in the moonlight. Compared to them,
The Lady Dancer
was a derelict wreck.

On Windermere’s side, their own wooden dock was ramshackle at best, kept from collapsing into the creek only by Herd’s constant repairs. The dock jutted about ten feet out into the water, and
The Lady Dancer
bobbed at the end. The creek itself was perhaps forty feet wide, and not particularly deep. But it was deep enough to allow river access to a fifteen-foot runabout like
The Lady Dancer
.

Maggy, with Nick following, walked out along the dock to the very end.

“Hop in,” she said, striving to strike a note that was friendly but impersonal. As she bent to untie the rope that secured
The Lady Dancer
to the dock, he moved to stand beside her.

When he didn’t do as she said, she straightened to discover him, narrow-eyed, looking from her to the boat and back.

“Hop in?”

“Yes, hop in.”

“What about you?”

“I’m coming. I don’t want to let her loose until you get in because your weight is going to push her away from the dock. So when you’re in, I’ll unwrap the rope and jump in myself. See?” To illustrate her point, she loosened and held up the metal-tipped end of the rope while she left the middle still wrapped securely around the pole to hold the boat in place.

He still hesitated.

“Nick, would you get in the boat!”

He grimaced, then capitulated. “I’m trusting you, Magdalena. Don’t blow it.”

“That’s a brave boy.”

Nick clambered in with something less than his usual grace, holding carefully to the side as
The Lady Dancer
rocked and swayed. Just as Maggy had predicted, his weight sent the boat scooting away from the dock. The
still-secured rope prevented it from going more than a few feet.

“Magdalena …” There was an edge to his voice as, crouched in the bow, Nick glanced up at her still standing on the dock.

“I’m coming. Hold on tight.” Maggy released the rope, and, holding it, jumped. She landed on the balls of her feet smack in the center of the boat, bending her knees to maintain her balance as
The Lady Dancer
bucked under her weight. Nick, grabbing both sides, said something explosive under his breath as Maggy regained her balance and went aft with the agility of a cat.