Under the Skin (33 page)

“No, we haven’t said anything yet—Glory’s hiding out in her room and has washed her hands of the whole mess. I was hoping you’d be home soon …”

I hated doing this—dumping Gloria’s problem on Phillip, especially when I knew he was ready for a quiet evening after a day on duty. But he made me feel better about it at once by thanking me for waiting.

“I’m thinking your instincts are probably right on this, Lizabeth.” His gravelly voice was at once amused and concerned as he went on. “Just hold tight—I’ll be there in twenty minutes, sweetheart. Take care.”

He hung up so quickly that I was left thanking a dead line. Or was it?

In the silence of my bedroom, just as I was taking the phone from my ear, I thought I heard the soft click of another receiver being set down.

Oh, dear god
, I thought and waited, almost holding my breath, to see if there would be some reaction from Joss.

There’s not a lot to do in my—our—room. I spent a little time looking in my closet, sorting out garments that were ready for the ragbag or the thrift store—far more of the former—and when that was done, I decided
that I’d probably been mistaken about the click. Surely if Joss had overheard that conversation, he’d be back here pounding on Gloria’s door with some more of his lies. No, it had been just my overactive imagination, I told myself, heading back to the kitchen.

Glancing into the office, I saw that the computer was dark and there was no sign of Joss. I continued on to the kitchen. No Joss.

I was wondering if I should go looking for him when I heard footsteps in the guest room above the kitchen and realized, with a surge of relief, that Joss had been upstairs napping—something he’d done almost every day after lunch to forestall the headaches he was prone to since his accident. The footsteps moved about and then started down the stairs just as James’s characteristic combined bark-and-howl told me that Phillip was home. I hurried to the window by the sink to watch as he came up the walkway and wished that I could have saved him this end-of–the-day drama. He looked tired, poor thing; he’d looked tired ever since—

A hand settled on my shoulder and I jumped. Whirling around, I saw Joss standing there.

“If my mother wants to throw me away again,” he said, his face white, his voice trembling, “so be it. But she’ll wish she hadn’t. And so will you,
Aunt
E.”

Before I could answer, he turned to see Phillip coming in the door. “Hello, Phillip. My suitcase and other stuff is right here and I’m ready to go.” In a split second, Joss’s voice had changed from mad and menacing to matter-of-fact and almost lighthearted.

“Okay, then,” Phillip stood aside to let Joss through the door. “Let’s roll.” He looked at me with lifted eyebrows and we exchanged puzzled shrugs.

“Well, that went better than I’d expected” were Phillip’s first words on his return from Asheville. “You
had me thinking I might have to cuff him or something but, whoever he is, Joss was a perfect gentleman. Thanked me for driving him in and apologized for what he called ‘the misunderstanding.’ ”

Gloria and I were sitting on the porch with glasses of wine. In the two hours since Joss had left, she had gone through a bewildering variety of emotions—her initial anger giving way to concern—
You don’t think this could make him suicidal, do you?
—and something quite like regret—
He was so sweet and I was so happy …

She was still a little teary as she stood and hugged Phillip. “Thank you so much … I really owe you one.” She hesitated and then whispered, “Where did you take him? I think he gave up the lease on his apartment. I had thought we—”

She couldn’t go on but dropped back into her chair, pressing the back of her hand against her lips.

Phillip stared down at her with a somewhat paternal manner. “I was glad to help out, Gloria. As a matter of fact, Joss wanted to be taken to the bus station. Said he’d decided to go back home to his adoptive parents and try to sort things out. But I gotta say I’d have liked it a lot better if you’d pressed charges for fraud. And, if you don’t mind my asking, what was in that envelope Lizabeth told me to give him?”

Gloria avoided his eyes. “It was just a note … saying how unkind he’d been to play such a trick and telling him that he should never attempt to contact me or my family again …”

Phillip continued to stare at her as if expecting something more.

My sister had the grace actually to look slightly embarrassed as she added, “Oh … and some money.”

I stood to go inside and get supper ready. “Can I get you a beer, sweetheart? Or—”

Muttering something about a shower before supper, Phillip followed me into the house. Once inside, he jerked his head toward the back of the house, his lips framing one word:
Talk
.

Looking back through the screen door, I saw Gloria tapping a number into her cellphone.

O
kay, Elizabeth, where do we go from here?”

Phillip shut the door of our bedroom carefully and fixed me with an accusing look. “I got to tell you that your sister is making me crazy. I was thinking about it, driving back from Asheville. First she’s on the run from her husband, then, about the time that looks like it’s getting sorted out—what with the Eyebrow fella getting picked up—then there’s this whole long-lost-child thing. Now that’s over—what’s next? ”

I went to the window and leaned my forehead on the glass. “You’ve been so patient about this whole thing, sweetheart. I wish I could say it’s over and she’s leaving tomorrow. But she doesn’t want to go back to Jerry. I think she’s done with him—she says she still doesn’t trust him … and anyway she’s determined to stay and help with our wedding—”

“Oh, the alleged wedding.” Phillip, who’d been shucking off clothes in preparation for a shower, pulled on his bathrobe and came to stand beside me. “I thought maybe you’d forgotten all about that.”

Sarcasm isn’t his usual mode: His words made me aware of just how angry he was. The man’s a saint—he’s put up with me for some time now—but even a saint,
sooner or later, is going to be tempted to pull off his halo and beat someone over the head with it.

“Phillip—” I began, but he didn’t look at me as he spoke.

“We’re supposed to be getting married sometime this month and as far as I know, we don’t even have a firm date for it. It would suit me fine to go down to the courthouse but
you
said you wanted it at the farm with all the kids here.”

I wanted to put in a conciliatory word but what that word might be completely escaped me and the accusatory monologue rolled on.

“So, correct me if I’m wrong here but as far as I can tell, fuck-all has been done about any wedding. Shit, Lizabeth, Seth called today, wanting to know when he and Caitlin should plan to get here and I had to tell him I didn’t have a clue.”

The effort he was making to keep his voice down was obvious and when I laid my hand on his terry-cloth sleeve, I could feel the tension vibrating through his body.

It’s time to put things out in the open
, I told myself. Now or never, win or lose, do or die—faded old clichés but they suited the moment. All my life I’d prided myself on my rationality but at critical cusps or turning points, it had been my intuition—or call it my heart—that I’d followed. This was one of those times. Taking a deep breath, I plunged into the sea of doubt.

“Okay, Phillip, this is what’s been on my mind—along with all of Glory’s stuff. Bear with me for a few more minutes while I explain why I’ve been … hesitant.”

The still afternoon beauty of the far eastern mountains, rosy with reflected light, seemed a ludicrous contrast to the turmoil of my thoughts. There should have been lowering storm clouds or driving rain. Tree
branches should have been whipping in frenzied agony. Instead, the scene before me was one of pastoral calm. Red cows grazed on the green grass and just below the window, the bird feeder was a gentle flutter of doves, there for a last few sunflower seeds before darkness sent them to roost.

Peace … Would what I was about to tell Phillip change everything—call down the thunder, stampede the cattle, send the doves whirring off to safety?

No matter. I’d let this drag on too long. I held to his still-tense arm as if to keep him there and began.

“You remember when Glory first went to a private investigator in Asheville for help in getting in touch with Arturo? Well, that wasn’t all she hired the P.I. to do. She was having so much fun with the detective stuff that she thought it would be a nice little hostess-gift-type thing for her to—oh god, I hate having to tell you this—for her to get the P.I. to find out more about what happened to Sam—”

Phillip looked at me now, his face a battleground of incredulity and frustration.

“Lizabeth, this is an old story. Sam’s Navy friends have
always
suspected there was something weird about that crash. Shit, I know I told you that Del, my friend—Sam’s friend too—has tried every avenue to investigate that crash, only to run into stone walls each time. And Del’s high up at the Pentagon. What’s some Asheville P.I. going to find out that Del—”

“And then there’s this thing about the Hawk,” I forged on, ignoring what he was trying to say. “A while back Aunt Dodie wrote me about a letter she’d found. The letter was from Sam to Dodie’s husband—and Sam had written him about someone from the Navy called the Hawk that he—that Sam hadn’t trusted.”

Phillip was watching me closely now, his face expressionless.
“Your aunt’s husband was a retired admiral, right? I remember Sam mentioning him. Go on.”

“Well, Dodie wanted to make sure that
you
weren’t the Hawk—I guess it seemed kind of logical; after all, that’s what Mackenzie calls you—but I just kept telling myself it was more of Dodie’s foolishness. And then this morning when we talked to Dodie, she brought it up again, how she’d thought—”

I couldn’t bring myself to finish the sentence. But Phillip could.

“That the Hawk was me, right?”

The muscle beneath the toweling sleeve hardened. Looking down, I saw that Phillip’s fists were clenched and white-knuckled.

“What about you, Lizabeth?” His voice was flat—emotionless—as he made the challenge. “What have
you
decided?”

The first time Phillip and I had dinner together in Asheville—our first
date
, weird as the notion seems to me—I saw him lose his temper and smash his fist into a brick wall. My instant reaction had been to get away from a man capable of that kind of violence. But he’d apologized at once and, in the years since, there’d never been the least hint of the temper he’d shown that first day. If there was a demon within this man, it was on a short, strong leash.

As I said before, now and then I throw caution and reason to the winds and make a leap of faith. I made one when I asked Phillip to marry me. Now I was going to trust my instincts—or my heart—again.

“June the twenty-first,” I told him. “Tell Seth and Janie that the wedding is Thursday, June the twenty-first—the summer solstice.” I threaded my hand through his arm—noting that the quivering tension of the muscle had disappeared. “That is, if the day suits you. And if
you still want to marry me, considering the sister-in-law you’ll be getting.”

“Are you going to take that shower?” I asked sometime later, wondering if Glory had noticed our absence.

Phillip gave me a final lingering kiss and stood up. “First, come down to the basement—I want to show you something I just remembered a few minutes ago.”

Puzzled, I watched as, grinning like a madman, Phillip belted his robe tight again and unlocked the bedroom door. His bare feet pattered down the steep stairs and I followed, wondering what he could have in mind—what it was our recent … activities had reminded him of? There was nothing much in the basement but the washer and dryer and freezers—along with assorted boxes full of his possessions that had been ousted from the back bedroom to make room for Glory.

Shoving aside a laundry basket, Phillip pulled out one of the blue plastic storage tubs and began to root through it, muttering to himself, “It’s in here somewhere—why the hell didn’t I keep it out? I know I meant to …”

Stacks of assorted correspondence and various manila envelopes along with what looked like old income tax materials began to accumulate on the basement floor beside the blue bin as he continued his search.

“Where’d this come from?” He was staring at a newspaper he’d just unearthed—a newspaper that I recognized at once as
The Marshall County Guardian
. It was folded around a clump of assorted mail—and in that assortment was a shiny red mailing envelope.

Phillip raised his eyebrows, looked at the newspaper’s front page, and shook his head in dismay. “January?”

He grimaced as he saw the little clutch of unopened letters hidden in the newspaper’s fold. “Oh, shit, Lizabeth. It’s your mail from early January.” He held it out
to me. “It must have gotten mixed up with my work stuff—been sitting in with all my old papers in that bedroom, waiting to get filed.”

I took the little handful of letters. It was Dodie’s missing red mailer—and inside would be the letter from Sam about the man called Hawk—the man he didn’t trust.

As far as I could tell, the red mailer was unopened. Aunt Dodie never trusted simple adhesives and this flap was sealed tight with packing tape. My heart grew lighter.

Phillip had ceased his digging through the papers and was sitting back on his heels, looking deeply embarrassed. “Damn—what can I say? I hope there wasn’t anything vital … missed bills or anything important …”

I tucked the red mailer under my arm and studied the other letters—junk mail and a reminder from the dentist. Fortunately Doc Adams left nothing to chance—his office always phoned reminders as well, so I hadn’t missed that appointment.

“No,” I said, “nothing important. But what is it you’re looking for?”

“I know it’s here,” he said, returning to his rummaging. “Remember when I first called you? I’d just moved to Asheville and I wanted an excuse to see you so I offered to bring out some pictures I had of Sam back from our early days in training.”