A Charmed Place (27 page)

To Maddie she looked completely vulnerable, a teenage sitting duck.

The village is safe, the village is safe
, Maddie had to tell herself.
Don't go to war over this.

She got her daughter's attention by nudging the chaise, but not without startling her as she did it. Tracey sat up, well on the way to yet another peeling nose. Her arms and the fronts of her shins were pink as well.

"Where is everyone?" Maddie asked her, taking a seat on the edge of the chaise.

"Aunt Claire's shopping in town, and Grandma's still at lunch with the countess," Tracey said. "I knew you'd freak if I went to the beach
unsupervised,
so I stuck around here."

"Did you really!" It was a moment to be savored, but Maddie was—literally—dog tired. She said, "I think I'll lie down for a bit; I have a splitting headache." It was a lie but it would have to do.

"And
... Trace?" she added as she picked up the empty glass by the chaise. "I appreciate that you stayed around the house. I know the grounding is hard on you. Why don't you call Julie and have her come over? You'll have the place to yourselves until people start wandering back. You can order a pizza for the two of you. Maybe later on I'll take you both to—"

Wait. She had her own pizza planned.

"Well, we'll see how it goes," she finished up vaguely.

So this is what it would be like until she told them about Dan: an ongoing conflict of loyalties.

She touched a forefinger to her lips and planted it on the tip of Tracey's nose. "Think about lotion there."

"Mom! I did!"

"Uh-huh."

Maddie stood up. She could practically feel the soft down pillow under her cheek, feel the joy of having a breeze blow over her as she drifted off to sleep on cool cotton sheets.

Pleased about the cease-fire between Tracey and her, Maddie went back into the house, stopping at the fridge for a glass of cold lemonade. She was gulping it down thirstily when she heard a car pull up on the crunchy quahog shells. Seconds later she heard Sarah Timmons's voice saying a brief goodbye, and then a car door slam.

Maddie wandered into the hall, pressing the icy glass to her cheek. Smiling, she said to her mother, "How's the countess? Any good dirt?"

For the rest of her life, Maddie remembered the look on her mother's face: a mix of shock and loathing, the kind of look she reserved for grisly murders on the six o'clock news.

Sarah looped her handbag over the hall clothes tree with a vicious downward jerk, then turned to Maddie. Her voice was
pinched with well-bred rage. "How did you
dare?"

Something inside of Maddie took a dive. "Dare? Dare what?" she asked with forced ignorance.

"Cavort naked on the town beach with a murderer—can you possibly be my
daughter?"

Floored by the double blow, Maddie could only say, "Mom—please—don't talk like that."

"Do you deny it? Do you?"

"Yes, I deny it! Of course I deny it!"

"How can you deny it? Lillian saw the two of you when she was walking her dogs!"

The woman in the cowled sweatshirt, walking two terriers. "Oh my God. That was Lillian?"

"What difference would it make, if it was Lillian or the fire chief? Everyone in town knows us. Someone was bound to recognize you. If not you, then certainly a CNN correspondent. What were you thinking? What were you
doing?
I'm not a prude, Maddie. God knows, I've
t
ried to move with the times," Sarah said, her chin beginning to tremble. "I looked the other way when your brother brought women guests here and then crept across the hall to them at night. I sent Suzette and that awful Armand a coffee mill when they decided to move in together on the
West Bank
. I even forgave your father the one ti—but this! It's insulting. It's hurtful and cruel and beyond my comprehension. You! Of all people, you! The one person in the family who was always above reproach, behaving like some—some tabloid tart! With
him
!"

"It wasn't like that, Mom!" Maddie cried. "Don't say things you'll later regret—"

"I'll say what I want! I'm sick of having to seem blas
é
about morals. I'm sick of having to believe that times are more difficult now, that people are more stressed, that morality is relative. Times are always difficult! People are always stressed! And morality is
not
relative! When Daniel Hawke led those students into taking over that building, he was wrong. When they set fire to it, it was
wrong.
And when you ignored his past and the harm he'd done to us and went prancing around in the water with him buck naked,
you were wrongl"

Maddie's head was spinning. All she could say was, "We were not buck naked. We were wearing sweatshirts."

The defense, such as it was, left her mother speechless. Sarah settled for a s
nort of contempt, then said, "
Spare me the rest of that rebuttal. You've dazzled me enough for one day."

She brushed past Maddie on her way to her room, but Maddie rallied and grabbed her mother's arm and
swung her around to face her. "
He is
not
a murderer and he had nothing to do with the fire! He told me!"

Her mother jerked her arm from Maddie's grip. In an icy fury, she said, "He started the chain of events that's left me a widow. He's a murderer until someone proves otherwise. Now please—get away from me. I have to pack."

Hot tears of shame and anger burned Maddie's eyes as she watched her mother march off with head held high. "Go ahead!" she shouted to her mother's back. "Run! Run away and hide! It's so much easier than forgiving someone and giving that person another chance. That would be work, wouldn't it, Mom? That would take an effort! And we know you have to save your strength for golf and bridge and tennis, and lunches with small-min
d
ed friends!"

Maddie was shouting at a closed door. In a rage of her own now, she lunged at the doorknob, but the door was locked. She slammed her hand against the panels and called out, "Listen to me! I love him, and nothing you say or do will change that! I refuse to fall for your power play, and I refuse to feel guilty about it. I've loved Dan Hawke since
Lowell
College
! Do you hear me? He's the only man I've ever truly loved! Everything else has been a sham! My life has been a sham! Do you hear me, Mom? Can you hear me? A sham! And I won't live that way anymore! I won't! Open this door! Deal with this!"

Silence.

Maddie let out an exasperated cry and kicked the door in fury, then turned around and sank, exhausted and with her eyes closed, against it. Suddenly all of it—the fireworks, the fund-raiser, the first confrontation, the escape, the beach, the dog, the relief, the happiness and now this—caught up with her. She was utterly, totally spent of emotion. She felt dead inside. She felt like a woman looking down at her own dead body.

But God or the devil had other plans for her.

When she opened her eyes she found herself staring into yet another pair of shocked and contemptuous blue eyes: Tracey, still in her bathing suit, was standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the hall, watching the drama play out.

Like a fool, Maddie said, "How much did you hear?"

It was Tracey's cue to burst into tears. "All of it," she wailed, and ran up the stairs sobbing hysterically.

"God in heaven," Maddie whispered.

With head bowed low and shoulders sagging, she dragged herself up the stairs after her daughter, but that door, too, was closed to her. She knocked as gently as she had pounded fiercely on the door downstairs, but heard only muffled sobbing in return.

We need a time out
, she told herself.
All three of us need a time out
. Her room at the end of the hall beckoned. She let herself be lured by it, like Ulysses to Calypso's island, and lay down fully clothed on the white quilted coverlet of her bed. She had little thought of falling asleep. All she meant to do was to fashion a strategy, and her body could no longer do that while standing up. She had to lie down in order to think.

That was all.