Mirror Image

“I’d rather you wait until we get finished or handle the crisis yourself.”

She felt her cheeks grow warm with indignation. Since their return home several days earlier, he had gone out of his way to avoid her. It had come as a vast disappointment but only a mild surprise that he hadn’t moved back into the yellow bedroom she occupied. Instead, he’d resumed sleeping alone in the adjoining study.

Their lovemaking hadn’t drawn them closer. Rather, it had widened the gap between them. The morning following it, they’d barely made eye contact. Words had been few. The mood had been subdued, as though something nefarious had transpired and neither party involved wanted to own up to it. She had taken her cue from Tate and pretended that nothing had happened in that wide bed, but the effort to remain impassive had made her cantankerous.

He had acknowledged it only once, as they waited for the bellman to come for their luggage. “We didn’t use anything last night,” he had said in a low, strained voice as he gazed out over the Dallas skyline.

“I don’t have AIDS,” she had snapped waspishly, wanting to prick his seemingly impenetrable aloofness. She succeeded.

He came around quickly. “I know. They would have discovered it while you were in the hospital.”

“Is that why you felt it was okay to touch me? Because I was disease-free?”

“What I want to know,” he ground out, “is if you could get pregnant.”

Glumly, she shook her head. “Wrong time of the month. You’re safe on all accounts.”

That had been the extent of the conversation about their lovemaking, although that term elevated the act into something it hadn’t actually been, at least for Tate. She felt like a one-night stand—an unpaid prostitute. Any warm, female body would have suited him. For the time being, he was sated. He wouldn’t need her for a while.

She resented being so disposable. Used once—well, twice, actually—then thrown away. Perhaps Carole’s unfaithfulness had been justified. Avery was beginning to wonder if Tate got off just as easily on the heady thought of becoming a senator as he did on sex. He certainly spent more time in pursuit of that than he did cultivating a loving relationship with his wife, she thought peevishly.

“All right,” she said now, “I’ll handle it.”

She pulled the den door closed with a hard slam. Less than a minute later she was slamming another door in the house—this one to Fancy’s bedroom. The girl was sitting on her bed, painting her toenails fire-engine red. A cigarette was burning in the nightstand ashtray. Condensation was collecting on the cold drink can beside the ashtray. Stereo headphones were bridging her head. Her jaws were working a piece of Juicy Fruit to the rhythm of the music.

She couldn’t possibly have heard the slamming door over the acid rock being blasted into her ears, but she must have felt the vibration of the impact because she glanced up and saw Avery glaring down at her, holding a gum wrapper in her hand.

Fancy replaced the brush in the bottle of nail polish and draped the headphones around her neck. “What the hell are you doing in my room?”

“I came to retrieve my belongings.”

Giving Fancy no more warning than that, Avery marched to the closet and slid open a louvered panel.

“Just a freaking minute!” Fancy exclaimed. She tossed the headphones down onto the bed and came charging off it.

“This is mine,” Avery said, yanking a blouse off a hanger. “And this skirt. And this.” She removed a belt from a hook. Finding nothing more in the closet, she crossed to Fancy’s dress

ing table, which was littered with candy wrappers, chewing gum foil, perfume bottles, and enough cosmetics to stock a drugstore.

Avery raised the lid of a lacquered jewelry box and began riffling through earrings, bracelets, necklaces, and rings. She found the silver earrings she had reported missing in Houston, a bracelet, and the watch.

It was an inexpensive wristwatch—costume jewelry, really—but Tate had bought it for her. It hadn’t been a bona fide gift. They had been browsing through a department store during a break in the campaign trip. She had seen the watch, remarked on its attractive green alligator band, and Tate had passed the star struck salesgirl his credit card.

Avery treasured it because he had bought it for her, not for Carole. She had noticed its disappearance from her jewelry box that morning. That had prompted her to storm the meeting in search of Tate. Since he had declined to advise her on how to deal with Fancy’s kleptomania, she had taken matters into her own hands.

“You’re a lousy thief, Fancy.”

“I don’t know how your stuff got into my room,” she said loftily.

“You’re an even lousier liar.”

“Mona probably—”

“Fancy!” Avery shouted. “You’ve been sneaking into my room and taking things for weeks. I know it. Don’t insult my intelligence by denying it. You leave unmistakable clues behind.”

Fancy looked down at the incriminating gum wrapper now lying on the bed. “Are you going to tattle to Uncle Tate?”

“Is that what you want me to do?”