Envy(131)

She took the telephone from him with a shaking hand and stepped out into the hallway. Mike went into the bedroom and closed the door behind him. Maris leaned against the wall and took several seconds to compose herself. She breathed deeply, sniffed her nose hard, blinked away tears.

Then, clearing her throat, she said, “Hello?”

“Maris?”

“Noah?” His voice was strangely muffled and subdued. She barely recognized it.

“It’s imperative that you return to New York immediately. I took the liberty of making your travel arrangements. A ticket is waiting for you at the Savannah airport. Your flight departs at eleven-ten, so you haven’t got much time.”

Her dread was so absolute, it felt as though her heart had been replaced with an anvil. She was suddenly very cold. She closed her eyes, but tears leaked through. It would have been useless to try and hold them back. “It’s Dad, isn’t it?”

“I’m afraid so, yes.”

“Is it bad? A stroke?”

“He… God, this is tough. Telling you like this. You shouldn’t have to hear this news over the telephone, Maris, but… he’s dead.”

She cried out. Her knees buckled and she sank to the floor.


* * *


Parker was at his worktable in the solarium, but he wasn’t working. Instead he was staring out at the ocean. He broke his stare only occasionally, and that was when he compressed his bowed head between his hands in abject despair and self-loathing.

He’d heard Mike when he returned from the mainland, but he didn’t seek him out, and Mike didn’t come to him. He’d gone straight upstairs and had been moving around in his room ever since. It sounded as though he were pacing.

Parker had been replaying in his head his last conversation with Maris. If you could call it a conversation. His stomach knotted when he recalled the horrible things he’d said to her. Her stricken expression haunted him.

She might be consoled to know that he was as miserable as she, but he doubted it. The only way she might be consoled was if he were drawn and quartered and the pieces thrown to a herd of ravenous wild pigs. Starting with his mouth. His foul, abusive, nasty mouth.

The afternoon dragged on interminably. It was hot and muggy outside and that oppression had eked into the house to contribute to his feelings of suffocation. Or was the weather to blame? Maybe he was being smothered by remorse.

“I stayed with Maris until they boarded her flight.”

Parker hadn’t heard Mike come into the solarium. He sat bolt upright and glanced over his shoulder toward the door. Mike was standing as stiff as a girder in his seersucker suit.

“It took off on time,” he added.

As soon as Maris could pack her things, she and Mike had departed for the mainland. She left without a word to Parker, but he hadn’t expected her to tell him good-bye. He didn’t deserve it. He didn’t deserve a kiss my ass, or a go to hell, or even a screw you. Her leaving without even acknowledging him had been more eloquent than any epithet. Eloquent, classy, and dignified. Typical of her.

Hiding behind the drapery, he had watched her departure through the dining room window. She had looked very small beneath her wide-brimmed straw hat. She’d also worn sunglasses to conceal her weeping eyes from prying strangers. The tan she had acquired on the beach seemed to have faded with the news of her father’s death. She had looked pale and vulnerable, fragile enough to break from the air pressure alone.

Yet there was a brave dignity about her that suggested an enviable inner strength.

Mike had stowed her bags in the trailer of the Gator, then assisted her into the seat. Parker saw her lips move as she thanked him. Then he watched until the utility vehicle disappeared from sight through the tunnel of trees. He would probably never see her again. He had expected that.

What he hadn’t expected was that it would hurt so goddamn much.

He had believed himself to be beyond the grasp of pain. After what he had endured, he had imagined himself immune to it. He wasn’t. He had decided to anesthetize himself with several belts of bourbon, but the first one had made him so sick, he’d thrown it up. He didn’t think there was an analgesic that would be effective against this particular kind of pain.

Now his back was still to Mike. He kept his stinging eyes on the surf. “Maris was worried about her father last night. Maybe she had a premonition.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. They were very close.”

After Noah’s call, she had been in a state of complete emotional collapse, but she’d had the wherewithal to tell Mike that her father had fallen down the stairs of their country house. She’d been told that he had died instantly of a broken neck. It had happened during the middle of the night.

The noise had awakened Noah. He had rushed to Daniel’s aid, but when he couldn’t get a response out of him, he called 911. The rural emergency service had reached the house in a matter of minutes, but it didn’t matter—Daniel Matherly was dead.

Noah had refused to accept the paramedics’ word for it. The ambulance ran hot to the small community hospital. Doctors there pronounced Daniel dead, making it official and indisputable. Noah had seen no point in calling Maris until daylight.

“She probably feels guilty for not being there,” Parker said.

“She said as much on the way to the mainland.”