Sweet Liar (Montgomery/Taggert 18)

“I guess there was.”

“I sweat all the way downtown. I was afraid Stewart’s would have a display of men’s clothes only, but they didn’t let me down. I got my red shoes and Mom got a new dress.” Samantha was silent for a moment. “It was the dress she was buried in.”

Mike continued holding her, continued stroking her hair, continued listening to one story after another, but with each story his resolve hardened. Blair had suggested that Samantha go to therapy. For what? So some guy could tell her over and over that it wasn’t her fault that her mother died? Tell her that her father’s depression wasn’t her fault? It was going to take more than words to make Sam actually believe that what had happened wasn’t her fault.

Somewhere in one of her stories she mentioned how her father had brought Richard Sims home for her to meet. It took Mike a few questions to realize that she’d married him mainly because her father seemed to have wanted her to. And why not? She’d dedicated her life from the age of twelve to twenty-three to her father in an attempt to make it up to him for what she thought she’d done to him, so why not marry to try to please him?

Her father’s attorney had said that Sam gave up all her outside life to spend time with her father and help him with his depression. Sam had been so isolated during that time that the attorney thought maybe Samantha had been the victim of incest, but he hadn’t wanted to get involved so he didn’t really know for sure.

Alone from the time she was twelve, without her mother who had been, as far as Mike could tell, her best friend, Sam had had no one to turn to, but she’d tried to be the best little girl in the world in an attempt to make her father love her again. It was understandable that she’d marry whomever he wanted her to marry. Maybe marrying a man chosen by her father would make him love her again.

When Samantha’s marriage had turned sour, she’d had no one to turn to. She couldn’t very well call her father and tell him that the man he’d chosen for her—and Mike found out that it was Dave Elliot who had funded Richard’s share in the CPA office in Santa Fe—was using her like a pack mule. Since Sam had spent her childhood isolated and burdened with secrets, she’d not learned how to make friends, friends she could tell her problems to.

Thinking back to the first month she’d been in his house, he now understood her depression, understood why she’d wanted to retreat into a room and never come out again. Retreat into her father’s room, he thought. Her father had deserted her when he was alive, but maybe she’d hoped to find him after he was dead.

Over and over again the question of what could he do went through his mind. What could he do to make Sam realize that her mother’s death wasn’t her fault? That Dave’s depression wasn’t her fault? Mike had heard that depression was anger turned inward. What could he do to make her turn that anger outward? He wanted to see her smash things, wanted to hear her curse her father for deserting her, wanted to hear her scream about what her ex-husband had done to her. He wanted to see her cry.

Getting up from the chaise, he carried her into the house. Samantha thought he was going to take her to bed, and she hoped he was because she was very, very tired. Instead, he started for the front door.

“Where are we going?” she asked tiredly.

“I’m taking you to your grandmother. I think it’s time for the charade to stop; I think it’s time for some questions to be answered.”

29

It was morning when Mike returned to Maxie’s room at the nursing home. Not that he’d left the place last night. After he’d taken Sam to her grandmother last evening, he’d told Maxie that she was to tell Sam the truth. Mike had said that life was too short, too much an unknown, for the two of them to continue pretending not to know who the other was. He’d been angry and he may have said some things he shouldn’t have, but Sam needed her grandmother for as long as she had her—and Maxie needed Sam.

He’d left them alone after that, and they had spent most of the night talking while Mike had spent the night, sleeping very little, on a hard cot in what was euphemistically called the “guest lounge.” Mike didn’t know what they had talked about for so many hours, but every time he had checked on them throughout the long night they were still at it.

“How is she?” Mike asked when he entered, looking at Sam curled into Maxie’s arms. He hadn’t shaved and he was still wearing the clothes, now rumpled, dirty, and wrinkled, that he’d worn when they saw Walden yesterday. Smiling, he looked at Samantha, sleeping the way one slept after great emotional trauma: with her mouth slightly open, her breath hiccuping now and then, her limbs as flaccid as an infant’s.

Moving forward, Mike said, “Here, let me take her. She’s heavy and your arm must be dead by now.”

For a split second, Maxie gave him a look of such ferocity that he took a step backward. When he recovered himself, he grinned at her. “I guess she’s not too heavy after all.”

Embarrassed, Maxie chuckled. “No, she’s not too heavy. I wish I could have held her when she was a child. I wish I’d been there after—”

“After her mother died?”

Maxie looked away, for she knew that Allison’s death had been her fault, for if she hadn’t married Cal, the Elliot family would have had no connection with Doc and Half Hand.

“The doctor gave Samantha a shot to make her sleep,” Maxie said. “He didn’t want to, but the other residents bullied him into it.” Smiling, she looked at Mike with love and gratitude. “Since you bought the books and games and all the other things for this place, not to mention what you did for my room, I think these people would do anything for you. To them, you’re a combination saint and superman.”

“Don’t let Sammy snow you. None of this has been my idea. Until I met her I led the quintessential life of a bachelor. I spent my days figuring out how to add more money to the already horrendous amount I have and my nights cavorting with one beauty after another—none of whom I gave a damn about.”

Stroking Samantha’s arm, Maxie put her hand to Sam’s cheek. Maxie looked older today than she had when they’d first met her, for what Samantha had told her yesterday about Allison’s murder had taken its toll on her. “And now your life is different?”

Mike moved to stand by the bed so he could smooth the hair back from Sam’s forehead. “Now my life is very different. Now I feel as though it has…This is corny.”

Maxie’s eyes were bright, intense. “I like corny, especially when it comes to my granddaughter.”

“Now I feel as though my life has a purpose. Does it make sense to say that I think I’ve been waiting for Sam? And do you know something? I think her father knew that I was waiting.”

“David,” Maxie said softly. “My beautiful son.” For a moment she looked away, her eyes misty as she thought of all she’d missed: her granddaughter’s life, her son’s death. And if she’d been there in 1975, it might have been her who was killed and not the mother of a young girl.

Picking up Maxie’s hand from where it rested on Sam’s shoulder, Mike held it. “Dave wouldn’t let me meet his daughter. At the time I thought it was odd that he wanted me out of his house before she arrived, especially since he’d had me stay in her little-girl’s room instead of the guest bedroom.” Mike paused for a moment because he understood that room now, understood that, for Dave, time had stopped on that cold February morning when his wife had been so brutally murdered—and as a consequence, time had been made to stop for his feisty little daughter.

“Dave chose Samantha’s first husband for her,” Mike said, looking Maxie in the eye.