He groaned. “If the world had referees, you’d be thrown out of the game.”
“No I wouldn’t. I’d win!”
He smiled at her. “I think you would. Okay, so now I have to go. They’re warming up the chopper for me.”
“Look, I…”
“If you say one thing about it’s having been fun, I’ll—” He broke off and looked at her, and in that one second she saw the real man, not the man who joked and laughed and told lies to cover the truth of his life, but the real man. There was pain in his eyes, and a longing for a life that he couldn’t have. It was gone as fast as it came. “I wish you and Granville the best in life. Send me an invitation to the wedding, will you?”
“Will you come?”
“And cry all over your wedding dress? No thanks.”
She laughed.
“I’ll send you a gift.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. “It’s my cell number. Only three people in the world have that number.”
She looked at the paper. “I assume that one’s your boss, then me, so who’s the other?”
“My mother, of course,” he said, giving her a cocky, one-sided grin. In the next moment he grabbed his duffel bag, kissed her cheek, and left the room.
/> After he left, Eden sat down on his bed and looked at the paper. Why had he given her his cell number? Why not an address?
“Because telephones are instant, that’s why,” she whispered. “If I call, he’ll be here quickly.”
She looked up at the closed door, and she knew without a doubt that Jared McBride had been lying. About what, she wasn’t sure, but she knew that he was lying. And she was sure that he wasn’t going to be very far away.
Chapter Nineteen
“STUART,” Eden said into the phone, her voice pleading, “please call Melissa. Please.” It was the third message she’d left on his machine in the last hour. She’d lost count of the total number of messages she’d left for him in the last two days.
The evening of the day McBride left—that was the way she seemed to mark time now—she’d started calling Stuart. By the time Melissa had awakened from her nap that day, the house was quiet. All the FBI agents, along with McBride, had roared off in the helicopter, and for a few minutes, the house had been quiet. When Melissa came downstairs, in an instant Eden was cast back into the role of “mom.” She tried to keep herself calm and not be resentful that she had gone from being a femme fatale, with two delicious men after her, to being plain ol’ Mom in a single day.
Twice, Eden had interrupted Melissa’s nonstop complaining about how rotten her life was to try to reason with her. But it was impossible. First of all, Eden soon saw that it was some modern taboo to not bring up the past. Bringing up the past was called “garbage bagging”—or something like that. “Mother,” Melissa said impatiently, “you have to deal with the here and now, not a hundred years ago.” According to Melissa’s modern-day philosophy, what this meant was that Eden wasn’t allowed to say “When I was your age…” or “When I was pregnant….” On the other hand, it seemed that Melissa was free to talk endlessly about her past. She said that Eden had “abandoned” her as a child in one day care after another. “I don’t want what was done to me to be done to my child,” Melissa said. “I want my child to have a father. Is that too much to ask? I remember too well my loneliness as a child. There were times when I thought I didn’t have a mother or a father.”
Eden had kept a sympathetic face, but it hadn’t been easy. Part of her wanted to defend herself and point out that she had done the best she could. And, of course, she’d very much wanted to tell Melissa that she had no idea what a “bad childhood” was really like. Eden also wanted credit for all the Saturdays that she’d arranged all-day playdates for her daughter. And what about all the nights she’d stayed up after midnight cooking meals for the week so her daughter could live on something besides those hideous “chicken nuggets” that other children ate? Melissa was three before she’d ever eaten a french fry. Et cetera. There were thousands of good things that Melissa seemed to have forgotten.
But Eden knew that to defend herself would only anger Melissa more, and what good would that do? Right now her daughter was scared out of her mind about having a baby, and she was afraid that her husband was never going to come after her. Maybe Melissa’s leaving of Stuart had been her daughter’s last shot at being a romantic heroine. Maybe she’d wanted to run away and have the hero come after her. But, so far, it hadn’t worked. No hero on a white horse—or in a silver Audi, for that matter—had shown up. Nor had he called.
With every minute that passed, Melissa grew more agitated and more determined to make herself believe that what she’d done was the right thing. She was fighting for her baby, wasn’t she? She was trying to give him the best there was, wasn’t she? She didn’t want her child to grow up feeling alone, as his mother had, did she?
It was close to impossible for Eden to listen to what her daughter was saying without defending herself, but she did it. Every time she felt the blood shooting up the back of her neck, she’d look at Melissa’s big belly and think how her daughter was going to learn. Melissa had all kinds of stories about bad mothers. She talked of seeing women in stores as they bawled out their children. “If those women would just take the time to reason with their children,” Melissa said. “If they’d just listen to them.” The hint was that Eden had never listened or reasoned with her daughter, but in spite of that, Melissa was going to give her child what he needed.
Eden turned away to hide her smile. She wanted to say, Wait until the kid says, “I’m not going to do that and you can’t make me!” and wait until every secret you have is blabbed to the world. Eden would never forget one Sunday at church when the pastor asked the congregation if there was anyone who needed their prayers. Melissa, only three, said loud and clear that her mother needed prayers because she’d been raped. The child had no idea what “raped” meant, but she’d listened to the people who had whispered when they thought she couldn’t hear them. All Melissa knew was that a bad thing had happened to her mother and she wanted God to help.
Just you wait, Eden thought. It was terrible to want to get back at her own daughter, but that’s how she felt with every complaint that Melissa made.
Late that evening, Eden put in her first call to Stuart. Maybe she could patch up the problems between them. She didn’t know how she was going to do it, and she greatly regretted every bad thought she’d ever had about her son-in-law, but she was going to try. If she had to grovel, she would. She’d apologize to Stuart, tell him she’d misjudged him, and say that she thought he was the finest son-in-law a woman could have.
But Stuart didn’t call her back. Nor did he answer the next four calls that Eden made. She called him again at six the next morning, but there was no answer. It wasn’t until later in the day that she thought of calling the superintendent of her building. By then Melissa’s tears and complaints had so worn Eden down that she would have paid Stuart to come and get his wife. How about if I give you a fake sapphire necklace? she thought of saying to him. How about if I sign the apartment lease over to you? What if I pay the rent?
But Stuart didn’t answer her calls, and when the super called back, he said that the doorman had helped Stuart into a taxi two days before and he’d had two big suitcases with him. Eden put down the phone and went to her daughter. Melissa was in McBride’s bed—no, she was in Eden’s guest room—and she was eating chocolate-covered marshmallows. Little brown papers littered the floor like dirty snowflakes.
“Was Stuart home when you left?”
Melissa looked up, surprised. “No. He’d just left for a trip to L.A.”
“How long was he supposed to be gone?” Eden asked, keeping her anger under firm control.