Chesapeake Tide (26 page)

He leaned against the railing, hands in his pockets, and looked at her thoughtfully. “You were great,” he said, “a real natural in front of people. I'd forgotten that about you.”

She shrugged. “So did I.”

“I never really gave you credit for wanting the acting thing so badly. I thought it was a phase that would pass. I thought you'd marry me, we'd settle here and raise a houseful of kids.”

“You mean like, every pretty girl wants to be an actress?”

He winced. “Something like that.”

“You were right. It was a phase, a very short one.”

“That's the reason you left, isn't it?”

She looked out across the dark water. “Partly.”

“Why did you stay in L.A. all those years, after it was over?”

Libby wondered the very same thing. She sipped her wine and tried to explain. “I'm not sure I realized the dream was truly over for a long time. When I did, there was Chloe and I was in school. I had too much pride and didn't want to give my parents the satisfaction of knowing they were right. I'm not sure I wouldn't do it all over again.”

He separated himself from the railing and walked toward her. “You broke my heart. Do you know that?”

“You're not entirely blameless.”

He stopped, surprised, pulled out another chair and sat down facing her. “You've alluded to that before and I still don't know what you're talking about.”

She drew a deep breath. She'd known this moment was coming. She'd rehearsed it for years, choreographing every expression, editing the words. It was time for opening night.

“I found out about you and Shelby.”

Russ could feel the blood in his cheeks. “Excuse me?” “

Shelby can be very distracting.”

“If you're referring to that scene at the club, you're making more of it than it was.”

“You don't have to defend yourself, Russ,” Libby said softly. “Shelby's very persuasive. You're not the first man she's gone after with a vengeance. It's like a game with her. The harder you resist, the greater the challenge.” She twisted a strand of hair around her finger. “I don't think you were much of a challenge, though, were you, in the beginning?”

Russ froze, his glass suspended in midair, and wondered if he was going insane. “What's your game, Libba Jane?”

Libby swallowed, promising herself that this time she would shelve her temper. She began calmly enough. “For all her faults, Shelby was my dearest friend and you were my boyfriend. Those relationships are sacrosanct. I had to choose, Russ, and I chose friendship.”

He was beginning to get angry. “You're way off base. I've never been interested in Shelby.”

“Really? What about when we were kids? Was I the first girl you ever slept with?”

“Why bring that up now?” he asked warily.

She kept her eyes on his face, forcing him to look at her. “You knew exactly what to do. There was no awkwardness, no fumbling, and you lasted a long time.”

“Since when are you the expert on seventeen-year-old virgins?”

“Eric wasn't much older when I married him.”

He whitened, surprised at the sudden twisting of his stomach. Libba had never directly alluded to the intimate aspects of her marriage. If he pretended hard enough, he could almost believe it never existed.

She didn't give him a chance to regroup. “It was Shelby, wasn't it?”

Russ twisted his glass in his hands. “Whatever I had with Shelby happened a long time ago, Libba, long before there was anything between you and me. Let it rest.”

Her voice cracked with emotion. “There was never a time before you and me. I've known you since I was eight years old.”

“It wasn't the same,” he insisted. “I didn't think of you that way.”

She was bitterly, blazingly angry, but only her eyes gave her away, her eyes and the words, clear and slow, that formed on her lips. “You're a liar, Russ Hennessey. You were sticking your tongue down my throat since I was fourteen years old. You would've done more too if I'd let you. Don't tell me your affair with Shelby was anything but complete and total betrayal. You cheated on me.”

“Did she tell you that?”

“No. Mitch told me, the summer I met Eric Richards, the summer I
broke
your heart.”

It was true, all of it, and he was guilty, although he never expected his own brother to betray him.
Why
no longer mattered. Mitch was gone and whatever motivation he had in those long-ago days when they were kids was gone with him.

There was no good rationalization for his lapse with Shelby twenty years ago in the peanut fields, except that he'd been sixteen years old with raging hormones and the girl he preferred wouldn't let him do more than run his hands up and down the front of her sweater. Not that he would have done anything more. There were two kinds of girls in Marshyhope Creek, those who put out and those you brought home to Sunday dinner. Shelby was the first kind and Libba, the second. He would no more have expected Cole Delacourte's daughter to drop her panties than he would have expected Shelby to wear any.

In the end, it hadn't mattered. He and Libba had fallen in love, the serious, forever, one-man-one-woman kind of love, and because Libba never did anything halfway, the panties and everything else had come off after all. None of which explained why she was madder about events that occurred in the distant past than she was about anything he'd done since.

He spoke quietly with no hope of immunity. “Like I said, it was a long time ago. People make mistakes. I made mistakes. We were kids. There was never anyone after you. What's the point of all this now?”

“I wanted you to know why I left and why I'll leave again if I have to and why I don't want to hear about your broken heart. You have no idea what you did to mine when I found out about you and my best friend.”

“All right, Libba. I apologize. I'll do whatever you want.”

Libby's eyes widened. She hadn't expected instant capitulation, not from Russ.

“There is one condition, though.”

Of course. She should have known. Here it was, right from the horse's mouth. “What is it?”

“We play it out in the open, so that everyone knows about us, your daughter, mine, your parents, my ex-wife.”

Color flooded her cheeks and chest. She'd grown up in a household where protocol was a way of life as natural as bees on honeysuckle and confession on Saturday. In her world, more specifically in Nola Ruth's world, there was no room for bypassing formalities.

She wet her lips. “How am I supposed to explain to my daughter and my parents that I'm sleeping with my old boyfriend?”

His expression was unreadable. He dumped the bourbon out over the railing, opened the cooler on the porch and pulled out a beer. Popping the lid, he threw the flap across the deck and into a trash can. “You'll think of something,” he said. “You always were good with words.”

The night was warm and the alcohol made it warmer. Libby poured herself another glass of wine. “I have a condition, too.”

“What is it?”

“Shelby's on the prowl again. I don't want you encouraging her.”

“The thought hadn't occurred to me.”

“Like I said, she can be persuasive.”

He lifted her chin. “Is that why you're mad at her, because you think there's something between us?”

When she didn't answer he laughed. “You're a fool, Libba Jane. The only times I've ever looked at anyone else is when you wouldn't have me.” His voice lowered. “Stay with me tonight.”

She shook her head. “I'll sleep with you, but waking up beside you is something different.”

He frowned. “Explain that.”

She held his gaze, her eyes shadowed and colorless in the moonlight. “This is about sex. I'm not interested in a relationship.”

He looked incredulous. “You're kidding.”

“No.”

He moved close to her, his eyes narrow and serious. “Tell me why you're here if you don't want anything real.”

“Lust,” she said bluntly. “You're sexy and attractive and it's been a while.”

A slow, amused smile crossed his face. “Shame on you, Libba Jane. You've changed. What would your mama say?”

“More than likely my mouth would be around a bar of soap.”

He set the beer down on the deck and reached for her hands. “I don't believe you,” he said softly, “and I can think of better uses for your mouth.” Circling her palm with his thumb, he lifted her other hand and pressed his lips against the skin inside.

She couldn't seem to breathe properly. His mouth moved from her palm to the inside of her wrist, to the tip of her elbow. She leaned back and closed her eyes, content to wait for whatever came next.

Russ took his time, his lips moving from her shoulder to her collarbone, settling for a time on the pulse in her throat. Finally; when she was all boneless heat, he found her mouth, holding her still while his tongue plundered and swept and teased until her arms wound around his neck and she pressed against him, urging his hands into places familiar and new.

One at a time he eased the buttons from their holes, pushing aside the white linen, exposing the lacy scrap that barely concealed her breasts. She was fuller than he remembered, with mature breasts and long, silky legs. He wanted to see her, all of her. He lifted his head. “Let's go upstairs.”

She nodded. Leaving her blouse in the chair, she gave him her hand and followed him up the stairs and into the large front bedroom that had once been Beau and Cora Hennessey's.

The bed was high. He pulled her after him, and there, in a tangle of sheets, he played her, caressing and kissing and probing until she wound her legs around his thighs, cupped his cheeks and pulled him into her. She felt his body go rigid and tight, and for a long, timeless moment he didn't move. Burying her face in his neck, she tasted salt, smelled his scent, heard his harsh, shallow breathing. Finally, it began, the rhythmic moving, slow at first and then faster and still faster until, caught up in a swirl of desire and motion, she lost track of time and direction and space and gave herself up to the moment, to warm arms and hair-roughened legs and the warm, wet heat exploding inside of her.

Libba lay on the bed, her head pillowed on Russ's shoulder, marveling at the wasted years of her marriage, wondering why she'd waited so long to satisfy such a basic primal need. Russ slept beside her. She didn't want to analyze her feelings for Russ Hennessey. It was too early for that, and sex, she knew, tainted the truth, wrapped it in a rosy haze that faded all too quickly, like a room in the harsh light of early morning after a party.

She'd thought of Russ over the years and imagined him married to someone else, someone after Tracy, an outsider, a stranger, a woman from somewhere other than Marshyhope Creek. It could still happen and if it did, she would be prepared. She closed her eyes and imagined what the future Mrs. Russell Hennessey would look like. Red hair... no, that was too close to home. Blond would be better. Libby's mind wandered. A tall, athletic blonde with strong features and straight, even teeth. Russ noticed teeth. It was odd, really, his fetish for a woman's mouth. Most men noticed breasts, legs or hips. With Russ, it was teeth. It was one of the first things he'd noticed about her, way back in the third grade, the way her teeth, baking-soda white and much too large for her mouth, clung to her bottom lip when she laughed. For years after, he had remarked on her childish overbite and how she'd finally grown into her smile. Whoever Russ's future wife was, the woman would definitely need good teeth.

Libby was prepared to accept a stranger, a woman who even now walked and slept and ate and talked, a woman whose life existed somewhere else on the planet. What she couldn't accept was someone who'd shared the same childhood, recalled the same memories, a woman who'd known Russ when he was a boy as Libby had known him. Those years were hers alone, the free, joy-filled, gilt-touched hours of a magical childhood. They were all she had of unfettered happiness and she wouldn't share them.

Carefully, she extricated herself from Russ's arms, pulled the covers over him and gathered her clothes. Downstairs she found her blouse, her purse and keys and quietly let herself out of the house. It was after midnight. The roads were dark and empty. Hopefully everyone would be asleep at home and she wouldn't be required to come up with an explanation, an absurdity for a thirty-seven-year-old woman, but still necessary.

The last thing she expected was her family home ablaze with lights and two police cars, red lights blinking, in the driveway.

H
er first thought was for her mother. Libby raced up the front steps and through the long entry. She stopped abruptly at the living room. Two police officers stood talking with her father. Bailey Jones sat on the couch, his face pale as bleached bone, his eyes lifeless. Chloe was curled up with Nola Ruth in her wheelchair, her slight body tucked in beside her grandmother's.

“Libba Jane,” her mother said, “thank God you're home.”

Chloe separated herself from her grandmother and ran across the room into Libby's arms.

“What happened?” she asked.

“Bailey's mother died,” sobbed Chloe.

That explained Bailey, but not the police and not Chloe. Bewildered, Libby looked at her mother.

“Chloe went to see Bailey on her bike,” her mother said, her words startlingly clear. “Lizzie died inside that trailer. Bailey was with her when it happened. Together Chloe and the boy brought her body here in Bailey's truck. Chloe drove.”

“Dear God,” Libby gasped. She clutched Chloe fiercely. “How did you manage such a thing? Why didn't you call?”

“There's no phone.”

Libby spoke to the boy on the couch. “Bailey, I'm so sorry.”

He didn't answer.

Cole spoke to his daughter. “Tell Serena to make up a room for Bailey. He'll stay with us until other arrangements are made.”

Libby nodded. Keeping Chloe with her, she climbed the stairs to the third floor and knocked on Serena's bedroom door.

The woman answered immediately, clucking with sympathy when Libby explained. “I knew something was wrong when those red lights kept flashing outside my window. That poor boy.” She took Chloe into her arms. “There, there, sweetheart. You're a brave thing. You did exactly right. I don't know anyone else who would have been brave enough or smart enough to do such a thing.”

Chloe managed a watery smile.

“I'll make up that room right away, Miss Libba. That boy could use a good dose of Verna Lee's valerian root. I'll see if Mr. Cole has any.”

“If not, chamomile tea might be a good idea,” suggested Libby. “Chloe might like some, too, if you can get either of them to swallow anything.”

“I'll see to it. Just give me a minute to dress.”

Libby walked Chloe into the bathroom, settled her on the edge of the tub and gently sponged her face and hands with a hot washcloth. She spoke gently, soothingly, until the child's trembling eased and then stopped altogether. Chloe yawned. “I'm tired,” she said.

“I imagine so,” replied her mother. She led Chloe to her room and pulled down the bedcovers.

“I'm not sure about school tomorrow, Mom.”

“We'll worry about that in the morning.”

“What about Bailey?”

“Serena will take care of him.” Libby hesitated. “There isn't much we can do for Bailey right now,” she said gently. “He's hurting and he'll have to work his way through the pain himself. The best thing you can do is give him space. Don't push, Chloe. It never works.”

Chloe's eyes welled up. “He was so sad, Mom. You should have seen him cry. I've never seen anyone cry like that.”

“She's all he had, sweetie. Not only has he lost his mother, he's all alone. That's hard for anyone, especially an eighteen-year-old boy.”

“He has me.”

Libby's heart sank. “He knows that,” was all she said. She kissed both of Chloe's cheeks and her forehead. “Good night, love. I'll check on you in the morning.”

When Libby returned to the living room, the scene had changed slightly. The police were gone and her father was sitting beside Bailey on the couch. She could hear the low, measured tones of his professional voice. The boy nodded.

Cole looked at his daughter. “I'll take Bailey into the kitchen for something to drink. I doubt if he'll eat anything. You and your mother will wait for the mortician. He should arrive shortly.”

She waited until her father left the room with Bailey. “God, Mama.” Libby rubbed her temples. “How did we ever get into this?”

“I believe,” said Nola Ruth slowly, “that involving ourselves with unsuitable people runs in our family, at least on the female side.”

Libby lifted her head and stared at her mother, eyes blazing. “How dare you say that? You, of all people. Neither Chloe nor I have ever been involved with anyone as
unsuitable
as your Anton Devereaux.” She spat the name from her lips, as if were a thing so repellant, so dirty, that she could no longer hold it inside of her.

Half of Nola Ruth's mouth smiled. “So, it finally comes out,” she said softly. “I wondered when it would happen. You've been so cool, so accepting. I wondered whether or not there was any of my Libba Jane left.”

“What are you talking about?”

“When you were a girl you had more life in you than a thoroughbred fresh out of the starting gate. You smoldered with it, just like Chloe does. I think you brought her back here because you were afraid, Libba. She wants what you wanted and you're afraid she'll be hurt the way you were.”

“What's wrong with that?”

Nola Ruth, well into her reminiscences, ignored the question. “Lord, you were a handful. I wanted a little girl who kept her Mary Janes shiny and her ribbons tied. Your favorite thing to do was wade through marshes looking for tree frogs. I'll never forget the time you came home with leeches stuck to every square inch of both legs.”

“I was eleven years old, Mama.”

“And remember when Tom Hadley planned to sell a portion of his groves to that private developer? You stood up at the town meeting and convinced everyone that condominiums and fast-food restaurants would be a disaster for Marshyhope Creek. It was the most eloquent speech I'd ever heard and you were sixteen years old. Even Tom had second thoughts, and when your granddaddy offered him a loan to make ends meet until the next harvest, he jumped at it. The land and the water were in your blood, Libba. They still are.”

“What has that got to do with anything?”

“Where's the life, honey? You haven't done any more than tell me
yes ma'am, no ma'am
since you got here— when you are here. Where were you all night, anyway?”

Libby looked at her mother but she didn't see her. She was remembering Russ's words:
“We play it out in the open, so that everyone knows about us, your daughter, mine, your parents, my ex-wife.”

“I was with Russ Hennessey,” she said deliberately.

Nola Ruth's expressive eyes warmed with pity and something else Libby didn't recognize. “Oh, Libba, will you never learn?”

“Like you did?”

Nola Ruth leaned forward. “Yes, like I did. I learned my lessons. I don't make the same mistake twice.”

“And I do?”

“Apparently so.”

“I'm not going to marry him. Besides, what's wrong with Russ Hennessey?”

“For starters, he's divorced with a child, and if you think Tracy Wentworth will sit back and let you have Russ when she runs to him for every little thing, you've got another thing coming. If you must have a divorced man, why not look for one with an ex-wife who's remarried and whose children are grown?”

Libba stared at her mother in amazement. “I'm not looking and not everybody plans who they fall in love with, Mama. The most I hope for in my next husband, if there is a next one, is some compassion and a large dose of character.”

“That's very nice, Libba Jane. What about practical matters like earning potential, security and no previous baggage?”

“When did you get to be so cold?”

“When did
you
get to be so naive?”

Libba shook her head and stood. “How did we get to this subject, anyway?”

“By asking that very question.”

The doorbell interrupted them. Relieved, Libby left her mother in the living room and answered the door. A neat man in a black suit smiled at her. “I'm Harvey Madison. Sorry to disturb you at this hour, but Mr. Delacourte asked me to come out and remove Mrs. Jones.”

“Of course.” Libby stepped aside. “Please, come in. I'll call my father.”

Cole was right behind her. “How are you, Harvey?” “

Fine, thanks, Mr. Delacourte.”

“Come with me.”

Libby watched the two men walk down the hall and into one of the downstairs bedrooms. She shuddered to think of Chloe and Bailey lifting Lizzie's lifeless body into the truck and driving with it between them on the single bench seat. Guilt assailed her. When her daughter was facing the crisis of her young life, Libby had been with Russ. Chloe's whereabouts had been the furthest thing from her mind.

Nola Ruth's New Orleans Catholicism raised its superstitious head. Chloe's experience was retribution, a warning sign. Libby was a mother. She had no business finding pleasure in a man's bed, especially a man who wasn't her husband.

She walked slowly back into the living room. “It's late, Mama,” she said wearily. “I'll take you to your room.”

“When will you be ready, Libba Jane?”

“For what?”

“For the rest of the truth.”

Libby sighed. “There's more?”

“There's a great deal more.”

Libby pushed her mother's wheelchair across the carpet and down the hall into her bedroom. Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe she didn't belong here in this place where dark secrets crept slowly to the surface, like parasites eating away at stones and tree bark. She didn't want to learn that her mother was human, and a less-than-perfect human at that. Libby loved her mother, revered her opinions, respected her decisions. A flawed mother didn't fit her image of what a mother should be. Suddenly her eyelids felt heavy. “Will it keep, Mama?” she asked. “I don't think I can take any more tonight.”

“It'll keep. It's kept for forty years now, but it has to be said.”

“Then another night won't matter.”

Nola Ruth sounded tired, defeated. “It won't matter at all, Libba Jane.”

Libby settled her mother in her bed and closed the door behind her. On her way up the stairs she met her father coming down. He held her close for a minute and kissed her cheek. For the first time he looked old and it frightened her. “Are you all right, Daddy?”

“I don't know what we're comin' to, Libba Jane.”

“What do you mean?”

He smiled and instantly she was reassured. “Never mind, honey. How's Chloe?”

“She's sleeping now, but she's worried about Bailey.”

“That girl's got good instincts. We should all be worried about him.” He patted her shoulder. “That's all I'll say now. By the way, the charges against Drusilla Washington have been dropped. There are conditions, but she can live with them. I thought you'd want to know.”

“Will there be an investigation?”

“Only if we can link the fetus's condition to the problems we're having in the bay. Is that possible?”

Libby frowned. She knew her father and it seemed as if his question was more than casual. “I'm not sure,” she said slowly. “It could take years.” She smiled tentatively. “Verna Lee must be pleased.”

“Very pleased.”

“And grateful, I hope.”

He grinned. “Maybe I'll never have to pay for another latte again. Sleep well, Libba Jane.”

She climbed the stairs to her bedroom, switched on the light and walked into the bathroom. Shedding her clothes, she poured bath gel into the tub, turned on the tap and sank into the soothing bubbles. The night had been a long one and her head reeled with half-finished thoughts. Foremost in her mind was the phone call she would make to Ventura County resigning from her former job. She was needed here in Marshyhope Creek, and after tonight's meeting she wouldn't desert the watermen who believed in her. The problem of Chloe was resolved, although Libby wished it had happened differently. She wouldn't leave Bailey Jones, not now when he had no one. And there was her mother. Nola Ruth was determined to make a full confession, and whether she wanted to or not, Libby had been appointed to hear it. She supposed it all needed to be said, that, and more. Libby had some questions of her own. Real peace would never be found without the answers.

She deliberately avoided all thoughts of Russ. Russ Hennessey had been deliberately relegated to the think-about-it-later part of her brain. She would admit there was chemistry. There had always been a powerful adult attraction between them. She thought, when she was younger, that the blind, absorbing, thick-tongued kind of love she felt for Russ was because he had been there for every significant first in her life. Later, she knew better. The magnetic pull she felt, that pulsing rise of tension and the slow, sweet anticipatory slide from wanting to absolute desire was because Russ was Russ, and the plain truth of it was, for her, there had never been anyone else with the same combination of unconscious charisma and personal charm. There still wasn't. He was quite capable of getting her to do just about anything he wanted, although he didn't know it and never would since she had no intention of giving him such an advantage by telling him.

All of which were very good reasons for not falling in love with him all over again. Loving Russ would be a disaster. She would be forever insecure, always jealous of other women, forever worried that he would leave her for someone else because she wasn't interesting enough or smart enough or good enough in bed. That had been her Rubicon once already. Images of Shelby and Russ, her best friend and her true love, had sent her on a downward trajectory of pain and rage and retribution that led her out of Marshyhope Creek and the tree-lined shoals of the Chesapeake to a place where it never rained enough to turn anything green and more days than not the horizon was smeared with a mustard-yellow haze. The fact that five years had passed by the time Mitch told her about Russ and Shelby and that the two had been no older than Chloe made no difference. The hurt was still bitter. She tried to resurrect it, testing the images. She felt nothing. She tried again. Still nothing.