Together Alone (39 page)

“We warned her when she placed that ad,” Emily cried, “but she was determined. She said she could sort out the good ones from the bad.”

Brian sensed her growing upset. “Don’t assume the worst. He may be more shady than bad. Dawn may be perfectly fine.”

“Should we call Celeste now?”

“Nah. Won’t do any good. Come morning, she’ll try to track Carter down. We’ll see if she has any luck.” He reached for the phone and called home. “Hey, Myra. How’s it going?”

“Did you find her?”

“No. Really, we won’t have a chance of that until morning.”

“Well, that’s good. Then you’ll look under the willow.”

“I told you I would. How’s my little girl?”

“She’s such a sweet little thing, sleeping so soundly. I was just standing there looking at her, and she turned over and made the cutest little sucking sounds, like she was drinking from a bottle. She still drinks from one, doesn’t she? I could give her milk, if she wakes up. I did it before, do you remember, the time she was sleeping in the car when you got home, and you didn’t want to wake her up, so you left her there, and I sat with her. She’s just a darling little girl. I almost wish she would wake up so that I could play with her. But I won’t wake her. No, I won’t do that. You will look under the willow tomorrow, won’t you?”

“Sure will, Myra. Give us another twenty minutes?”

“Take your time. Take as long as you want. I don’t think I could sleep anyway if I had to go home now. This is too exciting. No, I couldn’t sleep. You do everything you have to do there. And keep Emily with you. If I know her, she’s thinking she has to run back here so that I can go to bed, but you tell her what I just told you. I’m not tired at all. I’ll stay here all night and into tomorrow, if you need. Take your time, detective. Please. You’re a good man. Take your time.”

Emily sat cross-legged on top of the covers. Beneath them, from the waist down, was Brian. His head was propped on the pillows, his body, like hers, shower-damp. Their fingers touched, quiet, soft.

He gave hers a squeeze.

She smiled.

“We’ll find her,” he whispered.

She nodded. She brought his hand to her lap, measured her fingers against his, stroked his palm.

He said, “I hate it that you have to relive this again.”

Her smiled was crooked. “It’s my fate in life, I think.” The smile faded, because none of those other cases—no, not even Dawn—meant to her what Daniel did, and Daniel’s case was the one that wouldn’t be solved. “Has Doug called you?”

“Me? No.”

“He threatened to. He said he wanted to ask you about Daniel. After all this time, he wants to know what happened to him.”

“It’s hard, not knowing.”

Emily knew that. Oh, she did. “That’s why I tell myself that he’s gone.” She studied Brian’s arm, tawny hair on a roping of flesh. She brushed the hair one way, then the other. “What if Doug calls you? What would you do?”

“About Daniel?”

“Would you reactivate the case?”

He was so quiet that she raised her eyes to his face. The angst there made her heart pound. “I did it,” he said without pride. “I took the case apart and studied everything that wasn’t studied the first time around. I haven’t come up with a clue, Em.”

Her breath came out in a shaky wisp.

“I’m sorry. I wanted to do it for you.”

She nodded. She should have known he would try.

His fingers circled hers, then carried her hand to his chest and anchored it there. “If I could do anything I wanted, anything at all, I’d take you someplace where you wouldn’t have to stare that pain in the face all the time.”

“Pain is part of life,” she said. “So is loss. The better the life, the greater the pain of the loss. Daniel was special.” She looked up at the window over the bed. The moon was there, in the woods, rimming leafless trees with silver tracings, as delicate as they were eerie, almost surreal. “He’s out there,” she whispered with a sudden fierce yearning. “Dead or alive, he’s out there, and maybe I want to know, too. Maybe then there wouldn’t
be
the pain.”

Brian kissed her fingers and returned them to his chest.

“I thought I had come to terms with him, really I had, but he’s suddenly coming back. Why
now?
” But she knew. Jill’s leaving home had set off a chain reaction of emotional happenings that had led Emily to a fork in the road. Daniel was there, unfinished business from the road behind her, standing in the way of the road she wanted to take. “I’m locked in here, Brian. I want to grow, but I can’t, because things that happened nineteen years ago are holding me back. Nineteen years. I should be past it. Something’s wrong with me.”

“Nothing’s wrong with you. You just love long and hard.”

“It’s a curse.”

“No, a strength.”

“I don’t feel strong.”

“You are. You’re one of the strongest women I know.”

“So, why does it
hurt
so much?”

It didn’t take more than a tiny tug to bring her forward. Lying across him, she put her cheek to his shoulder. Her hands found a needed warmth between their bodies.

He didn’t speak, didn’t try to explain things for which there weren’t good explanations. He didn’t offer platitudes or pollute the night with diversionary talk. He simply held her, allowing her to feel the pain that she had suppressed too often, and she let it go, let it go in great gasps and keening wails that were the soul-deep expression of a mother’s worst fears and most dreaded grief.

Drained then, finally, she slept.

B
RIAN WAS PUTTING JULIA INTO HER CAR SEAT
the next morning when Myra scurried across the cul-de-sac. Her eyes were bright, her voice a breathless flutter carrying easily into the car. “I’ve been counting the minutes since dawn. Will you come now?”

It was barely seven, earlier than Brian usually left, but he wanted to get Julia settled in at Janice’s, pick up coffee at Nell’s, and hit the station in time to work with the computer before he went to Celeste’s.

“This isn’t the best time,” he said and fastened Julia in.

“But you promised,” Myra said.

“I haven’t forgotten.”

“You haven’t found the girl, have you?”

“Not yet.”

“Then you have to come look in my yard!”

He backed out of the car and closed the door. “First things first. Now, the station. Later, the yard.” He took Myra gently by the arm and walked her down the driveway. “Besides, it’s freezing. There’s no need to look under the willow until it warms up a bit.”

“Good Lord, you can’t wait until spring, if she’s missing now!”

“Not until spring,” he guided her toward her house, “just until later this morning, maybe noonish. It’ll be warmer once the sun breaks through.”

“What if it doesn’t break through?”

“Then I’ll look anyway. Give me a few hours. I promise, I’ll be back.”

“But what if you find her first?” Myra asked with such horror that Brian had to wonder if her obsession hadn’t gone bad.

He opened her door and saw her inside. Then he gave her his strongest, most reassuring look. “I’ll be back. I’ll go out to the willow with you, whether we find Dawn or not. But I can’t do it unless you stay warm. Will you stay inside here until I get back?”

Myra looked up at him without blinking. Slowly, obediently, she nodded.

It struck Brian that his own mother wasn’t much younger than Myra, that she could deteriorate in the future, that he might have to grapple, as Myra’s children were doing, with painful decisions.

Saddened, he put a gentle kiss on Myra’s brow, before closing her door and heading back across the street.

Celeste started calling Carter’s office at eight the next morning. Carter often called her that early from there, and he wasn’t working alone. More than once he had put her on hold while he gave instructions to one of his people.

Today no one answered the phone. She tried every five minutes, pacing between calls, impatient beyond belief, wanting things cleared up. It was bad enough that she didn’t know where her daughter was, but the shadow that Brian and Emily cast over Carter made things worse. She couldn’t believe that he was anything but wonderful, she just couldn’t.

Shortly before eight-thirty, Kay breezed through her door. “I just heard about Dawn! Why didn’t you call me last night?”

“There didn’t seem any point. I had already talked with Marilee, and she didn’t know anything. I’m very confused, Kay. Is Dawn off somewhere, pulling a Dawn? Or am I supposed to worry?”

“Have you reached Carter?”

Celeste grew wary. “How did you know I was trying?”

“Brian stopped by. He’ll be over in a little while. He had to do a few things at the station. Did you reach him?”

Celeste knew what Brian was thinking, but he was dead wrong. She intended to prove it. “No one’s at his office yet. Someone should be in by nine.”

“Carter told you he was going to Paris?”

“He
is
in Paris.” She dialed the office number again, let it ring eight times, hung up.

“You’d think they’d have an answering machine,” Kay mused. “Ahh, there’s Emily. With
coffee,
bless her.”

Celeste was more concerned with Kay’s suggestion than with coffee. “Why would you think they’d have an answering machine? It’s not a prerequisite for success.”

“I would think they wouldn’t want to miss any calls.”

“Clothes shops don’t have answering machines. Neither do restaurants, supermarkets, or schools—speaking of which, don’t you have to be running along?” If Kay was going to be negative, the sooner she left, the better.

“I’m not teaching today, not with Dawn missing.” She opened the door for Emily. “You are a lifesaver.”

“How is she?” Emily asked softly.

“I’m fine,” Celeste said, “or I would be, if everyone around here weren’t so suspicious.
I’m
worried about Dawn.
You
all are worried about Carter.”

Emily handed her a cup of coffee. “Have you reached him?”

“I’m waiting for his office to open. This is going to be so embarrassing. What am I supposed to say,” she sugared her voice, “‘Hi, sweetie, just wanted to make sure you are where you said you’d be.’” She pulled the top off the coffee, spilled some in the process, and swore. Her scowl encompassed both of her friends. “It’s sour grapes. That’s all. You guys didn’t want me putting an ad in the personals. If Carter turns out to be great, you’ll be proved wrong.”

That said, she stuck her hands in the back pockets of her jeans.

Emily uncapped her coffee. She sipped it for a minute, then said, “The good news is that he doesn’t have a criminal record.”

Celeste bristled. “You
checked?
”

“The bad news is that he doesn’t have a house or a phone in Cambridge.”

“Emily, I’ve
been
to his house. I’ve
used
his phone.”

“Are you sure they’re his?”

“Whose
else
would they be?”

“A friend’s, maybe?”

“To what end?”

“To impress you.”

Celeste felt betrayed, not by Carter but by Emily, Kay, Brian, John, and every other ugly skeptic in the world. “And his career is a hoax, too? His
designs
are a hoax? Sorry, but I’ve seen samples of those designs. I’ve been inside them. No, his career is real. I’ve met his friends. I’ve met his clients. I’ve met his
partner
.”

Emily focused on her coffee.

Celeste found that to be as much an expression of doubt as the spoken word might be. “So now you’re thinking that the word ‘partner’ can be used loosely, that maybe the man he introduced me to is his golf partner, or his poker partner, or his partner in
crime.
How can you be so negative? What’s the line about a person being innocent until proven guilty?” She turned to the phone, dialed Carter’s office, picked at her thumbnail while the ringing went on and on.

She slammed the phone back onto its hook in time to see a tall shape materialize at the kitchen door. The shape knocked. It turned the knob and let itself in.

Celeste wondered what else could go wrong. “You didn’t have to come,” she said. “Kay, Emily, you remember Jackson.”

She studied him while they said the kinds of brief hellos that Jackson could handle. She hadn’t seen him in several years, since Dawn had started driving to meet him herself. He looked well—tired and overworked, perhaps, but that was nothing new for workaholic old Jack.

His gaze fell on her and stayed.

She folded her arms on her chest and refused to look away. If he had come to berate her for Dawn’s misbehavior, she would walk out of the room. Ditto, if he was joining the campaign against Carter.

He surprised her by simply asking, “Has she called?”

Celeste shook her head. “She’ll show up. I know she will. You really didn’t have to drive all the way down.”

“You were worried enough to call me.”

“I only called because I thought you might know where she was. I didn’t mean for you to drop everything and rush over.”

“Didn’t you think I’d worry, too?”

“Actually,” Celeste said, remembering all the lonely years when she had been overwhelmed by single parenthood, “no. There’s no history of that.”

“Maybe because you never shared much about her. If there were problems, I never knew. I only heard about the good stuff, the stuff that said what a great mother you were.”

“Uh, we’ll be in the other room,” Kay murmured and, dragging Emily along, was gone.

“I
was
a great mother,” Celeste told Jackson, “or a good one, at least. I’m not saying I didn’t make mistakes, but I tried, and it was
hard.
I didn’t have anyone to consult. I didn’t have anyone to share the blame when things went wrong.”

Jackson was backed to the counter. His hands curved around the edge flanking his hips, and while his long, lanky frame wasn’t exactly slouched, it wasn’t straight either. Nor was he arguing with what Celeste said.

So she went on, venting the resentment that she didn’t have room for inside, what with concern over Dawn and nervousness—yes, there was that despite her protests—over Carter. “I was alone with Dawn from the time she was one. I had every single responsibility for her right smack dab on my shoulders, and she wasn’t an easy child, even back then. She was as headstrong and contentious as she is now.”

“Like her mother,” Jackson said with a strange smile.

“I
never
challenged my parents the way she did me.”

“Maybe not, but you were a wild child when we met.” Still, that strange smile. It spoke of memories, fond ones, and softened Celeste, making her feel, oddly, more exposed. For all their years apart, Jack had seen shades of her that others hadn’t

“Okay,” she admitted. “I let loose for a time. But I never rubbed my parents’ noses in it. And Dawn knows nothing about those days, so she couldn’t have been following my example, and even
then
she bucked me at every turn. She tested every limit I ever set.”

“She did well in school.”

“Well, she had the brains. She’s your daughter. But she wouldn’t have done well, if I hadn’t been on her back to study. So say I’m a nag of a mother, but someone had to do it, and you weren’t around. You had the easy part. It didn’t take any effort to send that check each month, because you earned it doing what you were good at, but I wasn’t good at being a mother. I didn’t have the natural aptitude for it that some mothers have. I wasn’t good at playing little games and decorating cookies and shopping for clothes. I didn’t have the patience. But I stuck with it, because once she was born, she was mine, and there was no one else to take care of her. So if I made mistakes, tough. I tried. That’s more than
some
in this room can claim.”

She turned her back on him and dialed Carter’s office. It was five minutes before nine. Surely someone would be there. But the phone rang and rang.

“Who are you calling?” Jackson asked.

“I’m trying to reach the fellow I’ve been seeing. He may have an idea of where Dawn might be.”

Jackson crossed his ankles. “Who is he?”

“His name’s Carter. He’s an architect.”

“Is it serious?”

“We see each other a lot, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Does Dawn like him?”

“Of course, she does. Why wouldn’t she like him?”

“You haven’t had any serious relationships before. Maybe she’s jealous of your time.”

“I doubt that. When she went to college, she left specific instructions. Don’t call me, I’ll call you. Does that sound like a girl who covets my time?”

He shrugged, and in the next beat looked at the door. Brian was there.

“Well, why not,” Celeste exclaimed, crossing the room to let him in. “Join the crowd. Kay and Emily are in the other room, cowering from domestic violence. This is Jackson, Dawn’s father.”

She resumed her place by the phone while the men shook hands. Brian came to her side. In a voice that offered as much privacy as it could in a room as small as her kitchen, he said, “I’m having trouble finding anything on the man.”

“Surprise, surprise. He’s clean.”

“No. I mean, I can’t find any record of a Carter Demming existing. Not as a federal taxpayer. Not as a credit card holder. Not as an architect.”

Celeste swallowed hard. “You must be spelling his name wrong.”

“I tried different spellings.”

She held up a hand. “Just wait. I’ll locate him.” It was after nine. She pressed in the office number and waited, praying silently, fighting panic. She breathed a mammoth sigh of relief, actually did it aloud, when a man’s voice answered.

“Hello.”

“Hi,” she said with a smile. “This is Celeste Prince. I’m Carter’s friend. Is this Mark?” He was the partner she had been introduced to that very first day in Cambridge.

“No. Jared.”

“Ah.” Her smile held. “Jared. I’m trying to reach Carter. Do you have his number?”

There was the sound of rustling papers, then a graceless, “Hold on,” and a clunk when the phone hit the desk.

“He’s looking for the number,” she told Brian on a triumphant note. She imagined Brian had been doubting that Carter’s firm existed, yet here she was, talking with one of his colleagues.

Jared returned with little fanfare and reeled off a number.

Celeste wrote it on a pad by the phone. There were seven digits, just like in the States. “Is there an area code? Country code? International something?”

“International? This is in Cambridge.”

“No, no. I need to reach him in
Paris
.”

“Paris? He’s not in Paris. Who did you say this was?”

Celeste swallowed down an awful fear. She was acutely aware of Brian at her elbow, of Jackson across the room. “It’s important that I reach him. Will he be calling in later?”

“I doubt it. We talked with him last week. He doesn’t call more than once a month.”

She chewed on her lower lip. “I see. Well, if he does call, would you ask him to call Celeste? It’s urgent.” She hung up the phone before Jared could ask for her last name or phone number, either of which would humiliate her.

“Well?” Brian asked.

She continued to face the phone. “He’s not there.” She didn’t know what to do, didn’t know who to call. Something wasn’t right. Carter was supposed to be there a lot, and if he wasn’t there, where was he, and if he wasn’t there,
who
was he, and why had he lied, and what was he doing with Dawn? She felt sick to her stomach.

Brian came close and spoke softly. “He’s not in Paris?”

She shook her head.

“Where’s this number?”

“Cambridge.” She met his eyes, pleading. “He told me he was going to Paris. Maybe this guy—this Jared—just didn’t know. He said he hasn’t talked with Carter since last week.” But Carter had told her on Monday that he was calling from the office. So if he hadn’t been there, where had he called from. And
where was Dawn?