Time After Time (57 page)

There was too much to do,
too much to oversee, too much to just plain enjoy. It was a
wonderful event, filled with good humor and charm and fun. People
were dancing. People were making wishes and throwing two-dollar
sun-disks into the polymer fountain. People were
begging
the millennium
man to plug himself into the battery pack he was storing behind the
cappuccino table. He'd light up the lights, and then his audience
would light up with glee. If there was an apt symbol for the night,
it was the millennium man.

Both the palmist and the
phrenologist were doing gangbuster business. Why not? One was
professional and the other was free. Victoria, who was walking
around in a dreamy delirium and hugging everyone she could, had her
palm read, while Dr. Ben gave the phrenologist a try.

Afterward, Ben said to Liz
and Jack, "Professor Thacker said I oughta have my head examined if
I really believe he can tell me anything based on the shape of my
head. I told him I
was
having my head examined. He said I was the fourth one to
crack that joke. I guess I'm not so brilliant after
all."

"I told Ben to see the
palmist, but he won't go," said Tori, her arm locked tightly around
Ben's. Her voice was high with excitement as she said, "She
told
me
that I'm
going to have a big surprise tonight." She gave Liz a wildly
meaningful look.

Victoria was sure, from
things Ben had hinted, that he was going to pop the question
tonight. "It's in the air," she'd told Liz during a congratulatory
hug.

Ben and Victoria moved on,
and Liz dipped a fat red strawberry into the fondue of melted
chocolate, then held it over a napkin and aimed it at Jack's
waiting mouth. He took it in one bite, savoring it.

Liz murmured with a wicked
smile, "Do you think anyone noticed that for a while we weren't at
the dinner
or
under the tent?"

"Hmmm, that was
great.
You I mean, not
the fruit," said Jack, kissing her with chocolate breath. "Of
course they noticed. Do you think they're fools? And who cares
anyway? Have I told you I love you?"

"In the last five minutes?
I don't think so." She pursed her lips in a thoughtful frown. "No,
I'm sure I would've remembered."

"I love you, darling. I
love you."

No time for any more
banter than that; Liz was grabbed and dragged over to the small
wooden platform that served as a dance floor; one of the boards had
collapsed. And so it went, with Jack cornering her for words of
love and quick, stolen kisses, and others hauling her off to some
other new crisis that thankfully wasn't a crisis at all.

When the gathering had
reached its peak — in noise, in attendance, in gaiety — pretty
Irish black-haired Deirdre, who'd dressed as a Victorian nanny,
came rushing up to Liz and Jack. "You won't
believe
who's here, mum," she said.
All night she'd been doing that — calling everyone mum.

Liz took a wild guess.
"Princess Diana."

"How did
y'know,
then?" asked
Deirdre, thunderstruck. 'Twas all planned, was it? You might have
tole me," she added, hurt.

"Deirdre, I was kidding
just now," said Liz, laughing.

"But I'm not!" Deirdre
said. "Come with me, and see for yourself, mum."

"She sounds convinced,
m'dear," said Jack with a wink. Something about that wink made Liz
decide to follow Deirdre as she wound her way through the crowd.
She wouldn't put it past Jack....

"Over there," said
Deirdre, fluttering her hands excitedly. "Behind Glinda the Good
Witch — see her? Not talking, just listening? Could it be, do
y'think?"

In profile, Liz had to
admit, there was a resemblance. Something about the incredibly
elegant line of the woman's neck and back as she inclined her head
attentively made Liz pause and consider. The woman was dressed in a
generic outfit, neither Gilded Age nor New. The point of the dress,
a plain black gown with long, open sleeves, seemed to be to
not
attract attention.
The three-quarter silver mask she wore was striking, but only
because all else was so severe.

"If only we could see more
than her chin," Deirdre murmured. "But the chin is
right."

"Or her hair," Liz said,
caught up in the fantasy. "Too bad about that turban
thing."

They stood there for a
moment, trying to be as discreet as they could. Liz said, "She
wouldn't still be around. Would she?"

"Where can she go?" asked
Deirdre. "It's always the same. Better here than in England. Their
press is even worse than yours."

Jack came up behind Liz
just then and wrapped his arms around her waist. Resting his chin
playfully on her shoulder, he looked off where she was looking.
"Well? Have you made a positive ID?"

It was still so new, this
wonderful, spontaneous public display of his love for her. Liz let
the sensation sink in, right down to her toes, before she
said,
"You
know
if she's here or not. Admit it."

"Me?" he said, kissing her
cheek. "How would
I
know?"

"Lizzie, Lizzie!" came
Victoria's hiss behind them. She was with Ben, as manic as ever, to
the point where Liz was beginning to worry. By now Tori — having
accomplished her pin-mission in spades — should be settling down.
But her green eyes were bright with leftover intrigue as she
whispered, "Someone said she's definitely here. It's definite.
Silver dress, black mask. Have you seen—?"

"Well for God's sake!"
boomed a voice directly in front of their group. A big man with a
loud mouth was approaching them in the first stages of a bear hug.
"Bony Maroney, bless my soul! I haven't seen you in years! You
haven't put on a pound or shrunk an inch!"

Victoria stared at him,
frozen in place.

The man, dressed as either
Dracula or the Count of Monte Cristo, wrapped his arms around her
in a death-grip and rocked her back and forth. "Judy Maroney,
how
are
you? Good
lord, and Paul? Still working on the Space Shuttle? Those two kids
of yours — they must be scaring the bejesus out of you by
now!"

Liz watched with a
mounting sense of horror as Victoria's eyes seemed to lose focus,
then shut tight in pain. Before anybody could do anything, Victoria
let out a shattering scream, then collapsed in the arms of her
well-wisher.

The man held her, limp in
his arms, and said in a shocked voice, "My god — what did I
do?"

Ben and Jack rushed to
take her from him, and then Ben, smaller than Jack but with a will
of steel, lifted the prostrate woman into his arms and began
elbowing his way through the merriment. Liz was aware of a buzz of
concern as Ben took the most direct route to the house, with Jack
and her following close behind. Inside the house, Netta, already
out of costume, ran to pull back the bedding in a bedroom
upstairs.

Liz, shaking from the
experience, was thinking,
Is it possible?
Is her insane theory possible?
Had Judy
Maroney tried to reclaim her self? Who screamed, in that case? And
who is being carried up these stairs?

Ben laid the unconscious
woman on a mahogany four-poster bed in a well-appointed, feminine
room that was in fact Mrs. Eastman's. "It's the only one that's
made up," Netta explained hurriedly.

They gathered around the
bed as Ben checked Victoria's — Judy's? — vital signs. "She should
be okay. She's had an unbelievable shock."

But he didn't sound nearly
as certain of himself as Liz thought he should, and so she waited,
with Ben, with Jack, with Netta, for whoever it was to regain
consciousness.

They waited an unbearably
long time. It seemed to Liz, and apparently to Ben, that the woman
who lay there should have come around by now. Liz began to have the
morbid sensation that they were gathered around a deathbed. She
shuddered, and Jack put his arm around her.

They waited.

At last, the slender woman
in the silver gown and star-threaded hair began to recover. Her
eyes fluttered open; she sighed heavily. Fully awake now, she saw
Ben before she saw the others. "Ben ...," she said softly. He sat
down on the bed beside her.

Ah — still Tori,
thought Liz with mixed emotions.

She watched, holding her
breath, as Tori sat up in bed and said, "Oh ...
Ben,"
and broke down into an
agonizing series of sobs, slipping headlong into the morass of pain
she'd tried so hard to avoid for the last five years.

And then Liz knew, and
everyone knew, that neither Judy nor Tori would ever be the same
again.

There was nothing Jack or
Liz could do now, so they left her in the arms of Ben, the best
possible therapy for her pain, and slipped out of the room. Netta,
blowing her nose in a huge white handkerchief, went off to make tea
for them. Jack and Liz, reluctant to go far, sat down on the top
stair of the vast and elegant second-floor landing.

"The healing will start
now, I think," said Jack, taking Liz's hand in his. "It's not going
to be fast or easy."

"But Ben will be there for
her. So will we." They sat silently for a moment, and then Liz
added, "Thank God Caroline's over at my place. She certainly didn't
need to see or hear this."

Jack smiled reflectively.
"Caroline told me it was her first sleepover, ever. She was so
excited. I have to say, the kid's a lot less of a monster
nowadays."

"A
lot
less," Liz agreed.

"I wonder what's happened
to change all that," Jack said, bemused.

"You've
happened. She adores you. I can tell by the way
she talks about you to Susy. 'Jack this. Jack that.' Susy's become
a little jealous, I think."

Jack lifted Liz's hand to
his lips and kissed it. "That won't be a problem soon." He laughed
softly and said, "We're going to have one hell of a mish-mash
family."

Which brought the subject,
inevitably, to Caroline's little brother. "Any luck tracking down
Bradley's father?" Liz asked Jack.

Jack shook his head. "I
have someone checking down leads, but Stacey dated a lot of men,"
he said a little grimly.

"You sound as if you're
not all that anxious to find the guy."

Jack tapped her hand,
still in his, against his thigh absently as he thought about her
remark. "You're right," he said at last. "I guess I'm not. I seem
to be developing a taste for finishing someone else's half-chewed
vegetables."

Or maybe you just want a
son.
The thought welled up, as she knew it
must, and then receded, like a wave from a beach.

They had talked about her
condition, briefly, when they lay in each other's arms a couple of
hours earlier. Jack had been abject in his apologies, ardent in his
reassurances.

"Babies or no babies — how
could I live without you?" he'd said to her then. "Just the thought
of it has been making me sick these last weeks. When I saw you with
the pin, I swear: I felt my heart stop. You were so...
beautiful —
glowing,
almost. That's when I knew I couldn't make the same mistake that
Christopher Eastman had made with Ophelia."

Liz then told Jack what
she hadn't told him so far: that it was Christopher Eastman who'd
gotten Ophelia pregnant.

And Jack surprised her by
saying, "I know. I went to see Ophelia's grave. I saw the end-dates
on the grave of her son and put two and two together."

So the air had been
cleared, once and for all. But Liz knew to expect an occasional
wave to roll in, and then out, if ever the talk came back to babies
again.

She sighed and said, "I
have to go check on things. They'll be setting up the costume
contest now. I wish I felt more like celebrating," she added,
standing up.

Jack got up, too, and
slipped his arms around her and kissed her. "Tori will be fine," he
said again. "I'll check with them and then go out and join you.
Isn't this about the time they form a line to do the bunny
hop?"

On that silly note she
left him, then walked down the elaborately carved walnut staircase,
open to all the grandeur that was East Gate. She had absolutely no
idea where they'd live after they were married, only that they'd
have plenty of family to fill the bedrooms, wherever it
was.

She took a shortcut
through the kitchen on her way to the tent, and there she found
Netta sharing tea with a sixtyish, well-dressed woman. A carry-on
bag sat on the floor near them. The woman looked up at Liz with an
air of surprise and expectation.

Without a doubt, she was
Jack Eastman's mother.

Netta, who'd been so deep
in conversation that she'd scarcely registered that Liz had walked
in on it, said, "Ah, and here she is now. Elizabeth Coppersmith,
this is Jack's mother, Barbara Eastman."