The Snow Garden (50 page)

     It was a short laugh, satisfied, one that lifted her shoulders, and it was followed by a slight nod. It was both knowing and dismissive. It said that no matter what she had suspected, she had never truly believed that another man could possibly be a genuine opponent in her fight for Eric’s affection. The abruptness of it tugged at some lingering attachment Eric held to the separate realm of passion he and Michael had managed to create at 231 Slope Street.

     That was how it ended. With one woman’s knowing smirk, a pat on the hand, and a mild compliment for returning to real life, where two men were never supposed to find the magnetic rightness he believed he had found with Michael. Instead, he was meant to walk hand in hand with her, a woman just tall enough to fit her head on his shoulder, for his entire life.

     “The scarf, Pamela. I need it.”

     ‘You gave it to me.”

     “I made a mistake.”

     “What mistake ...” She frowned, trying to wriggle into reason from her smug alcohol haze.

     “When I bought it from the store—”

     She backed away, both hands protectively going to the scarf at her neck. “What store?”

     “It wasn’t mine to give you.” He didn’t rush her, but it only took him a few steps to close the distance between them, and his hand was reaching for her neck when she batted it away with one of her own. 

     “How stupid do you think I am?”

     “Pamela, you’re being ridiculous. Come on—”

     “Ridiculous? I’ll tell you what’s ridiculous. All my friends in there telling me that I’m your beard. Do you know what a beard is? Because I didn’t. I had to ask.”

     She backed away and he was afraid her feet would slip out from under her on the icy grass.

     “I made a mistake.” His voice sounded pathetic and weak. Pamela’s face fell with more pain than anger, and for one brief second, he thought they might resolve this amicably, find a quiet resolution, two articulate people muffling the betrayal between them.

    “If that faggot wants his scarf back,
I’ll
give it to him!”

    She turned and ran.

     “She vanished.” Eric stared down into the fire.

     Inverness Creek. Kathryn had seen it only once, when she and Randall had tried their snowy shortcut through the Elms. Floating patches of ice and pools of black water. And a five-foot drop from the top of the bank to the water below. Randall had stopped her from sliding down. She had noticed how captivated Randall had been by the steep drop at their feet. And when she had recounted what April had told her about Pamela Milford, Randall had responded with,
“
Maybe
she drowned.”

     Eric continued, “All I could hear was running water, so I followed • the sound. When I got there, she had landed facedown on the ice. The creek was entirely frozen over and one of her legs... it was bent. Not , just broken. Bent at an angle that looked . .. impossible. By the time I made it down to the edge of the ice I could tell she was unconscious. And then I saw the toe of one of her boots had punched through the ice and the water was coming up in a thin geyser around her foot.

     “That’s when I realized how thin the ice was. I tried to get to her anyway, but I had barely taken my first step when the ice rose and fell. And I knew if I put any more weight on it, it would break and she would get sucked under and I wouldn’t be able to get to her. So I left.” 

     Eric turned from the fireplace and locked eyes with her. Somehow, over the time it had taken to tell the entire story of him and Michael Price, she had become his judge and jury.

     “I went to get help. I thought if the ice didn’t give way when she hit it, then maybe I had time to go back and get somebody. And I did. I went back to the party. I could barely speak, I was in a panic, but I found some guys and I told them Pamela had run into the Elms. And they came with me. And we got to the creek and I even pointed to where she was but.. . she was gone.”

     “The ice broke?”    

     “It didn’t just break. In her place, there was a hole twice the size of her body.”

     Kathryn shivered. “Michael?”

     Eric just looked at the flames. “I told myself I was wrong. That Michael didn’t have anything to do with it. And I told the police that she just got away from me. But when they finally found her body, the scarf was gone.”

     Everything in Kathryn wanted to dig her heels in, to stop them for continuing in the direction Eric had headed in. “It could have drifted away.”

     But Eric turned into the dining room and returned with a red, moth-eaten scarf. He extended it to her, and she took it. The cashmere fibers, once soft, had frayed and coarsened with age.

     “He left it for me.”

     Fearing it was the incorrect answer, Kathryn said, “Michael.” 

     “Randall,” Eric corrected her.

     Eric returned to his chair, and she stared down at the scarf. Part of her brain had yearned to fill in the picture of Randall Stone left incomplete by his sudden departure. But never, after all she had discovered, would she have guessed that the real nature of his arrival at Atherton had such a diabolical purpose. The explanation she had craved couldn't be swallowed without pain

     “His real name is Benjamin Collins. He’s from Texas,” she said finally, lifting her eyes from the scarf.   “When he was young, there was an accident.”

     “A fire?” Eric asked.

     She nodded. He had seen Randall’s scars long before she had. “A train wreck. I’m not sure, but Ran . . .  
Ben
might have caused it. It destroyed the trailer park where he lived ..

     But even as she filled in the other half, where Randall came from, more questions arose than answers. How had he made it from Texas to New York, and how on earth did he come into contact with Michael Price? She returned her attention to Eric. He was at least present, concrete. “Are you saying that Michael Price
sent
Randall here?” 

     “Randall’s application to this school was a mess. But with Michael Price listed as his legal guardian—well, I’m sure some oversights on his part were also overlooked by the admissions committee.”

     “Why though?”

     Eric shrugged. “Maybe so Randall could do exactly what he’s done.”

     “It doesn’t make any sense.”

     “Ask him,” Eric said, gesturing to the magazine spread open on the coffee table in front of her.

     Realization tightened a fist of anger inside her chest. Eric had lured her to his house only to make a simple demand of her. “That’s the only reason you told me any of this? So I can ... what? Go rescue him?”

     “He doesn’t have the first clue what his
legal guardian
is capable of.” 

      Kathryn stood up. “It sounds like they were made for each other.” 

     “Randall is not a murderer. But Michael created him, and now he’s served his purpose."

     “If Michael sent Randall here to destroy your career, he can’t go and harm the person making the accusations!”

     “They’ve already been made, Kathryn. And do you honestly think that a man of Michael’s stature, a man with his career, is going to allow a paper trail of scandal to lead back to him?”

     “He’s listed as Randall’s legal guardian—”

     “On an application so filled with holes that the vice president of public affairs for the university told me that if it was ever made public the university might not recover from the scandal. There’s a reason Michael didn’t put Randall here with the perfect application. With an obvious forgery, it’s Michael’s way out!”

     Eric stood, eye to eye with her, almost pleading. “Maybe we don’t know who he really was, Kathryn. But the young man I knew was too arrogant and too selfish to obey the wishes of a man like Michael. All your friend has to do now is make one mistake, and Randall Stone will cease to exist as quickly as he came to be.”

    
One mistake
,
Kathryn repeated to herself.

     Did Jesse Lowry qualify?

     Her eyes fell to the magazine, the ostentatious chandelier with its ceramic tentacles. The cold white walls and marble floors. The place that had engendered the young man she may or may not have known. Desperate curiosity fought with her wounded pride. “After all the lies he’s told, I’m supposed to rescue Randall?”

     “No. You’re supposed to decide whether Michael Price should be the one to punish him.”

     “Why not you?” she snapped.

     Eric went silent, as if ashamed of his own fear. “I wouldn’t have asked you here if I didn’t believe that you are the one Randall wants to see. That you could get him away from Michael before anyone else could.”

     “What about the police?”

     “What would we tell them? The twenty-year-old story of a man now suspected of killing his wife. They would want to know why I waited so long. And I don’t even know the answer to that.”

     Kathryn tucked the magazine under one arm and turned, giving Eric the illusion that she had come to a decision. Truly she hadn’t. In the doorway, she stopped and turned and saw that Eric was watching her departure intently.

     “If I go to 231 Slope Street right now, what will I find?” she asked.

     Eric drained the last of his wine. “Good-bye, Kathryn.”

     As she descended the front steps, Eric’s words echoed in her. One mistake and Randall Stone will cease to exist. She thought of Jesse’s empty side of the room.

Lauren Raines had thrown herself against the front door of 231 Slope Street and was pounding it with both fists. Kathryn pushed the front gate open and rushed up the walk. As she approached, Lauren whirled around, her eyes wild and tear-stained. She lunged at Kathryn and swung. The sharp punch caught her under the jaw and sent her toppling into the icy hedge beside the front steps.

     “They locked me out!” Lauren screamed. Kathryn tried to scramble out of the bushes and shield herself from another blow. “Maria heard us! She heard everything we said, and they locked me out of the fucking house. You stupid — ”

     Lauren hurled herself at her and Kathryn caught both of her clenched fists. Lauren bent at the knees, bucking and twisting to get free of Kathryn’s grip. “We need to get inside!” she hissed at Lauren.

     “We can’t!” Lauren wailed. “They lock the whole house down during a-”

     “Purging. I know.”

     She released Lauren’s wrists with a shove that sent her stumbling backward until she tripped over the first step and landed ass first on the third, her breath going out of her in a pained grunt.

     Kathryn ran down the driveway.

     Oddly, the back door stood open, and without thinking she raced inside.

     The only light in the living room came from the six candles on the mantel, mounted in the silver candelabra. In the foyer, she hit the switch and the chandelier flooded the staircase with light.

     The giant harp and mandolin were missing from the upstairs landing. The bedroom door stood open and a girl, not much older than herself, lay facedown in the hallway as if she had been struck dead in the middle of a sidestroke into the hallway. Her matted red hair fanned out on the carpet around her downturned head; her emaciated, naked back rose and fell with labored breaths, her spine visible with each inhalation.

     In the bedroom, Kathryn saw that the six single beds had been pushed together into one. Candlelight danced across the still, naked flesh and twisted, sweat-soaked sheets. The bodies were strewn in various positions of thrall. Whatever drug Eric had slipped them had acted slowly, not taking effect until they had thrown themselves into their orgy. And once it became clear that they had been drugged beyond what they had done before, only one of them had managed to try to escape the bedroom. The giant harp leaned against the left wall, its bottom resting against the edge of the mattresses. Her eyes swept to the other wall. Maria had been lassoed to the giant mandolin, her wrists secured above her head. Her head rolled forward and the sounds of vomit and air rasped in her throat.

     Kathryn crawled across the beds, ignoring the weak groans of protest as her knees dug into a stomach, an arm, or a breast, She pried at the hemp rope securing Maria’s wrists until it came free, and caught the girl around the waist before she could crumple onto the other bodies. She managed to turn her over, and Maria opened hooded eyes to try to focus on her, her mouth a half grimace.

     She saw Lauren standing in the doorway.

     “Call 911!”

     Lauren just lifted one arm. She was holding a kitchen knife with a trembling wrist. Candlelight danced off the blade.

     “Lauren!” Kathryn roared. “Call 911!”

     Lauren violently shook her head no, and Kathryn slid out from under Maria’s weight, crawling through the tangle of limbs. Her feet hit the floor and she approached Lauren without fear, even as Lauren raised the knife in front of her. Agony was stitched across her face. Her resolve was gone. Instead, her jaw trembled and her eyes were smarting with tears.

     Kathryn gripped Lauren’s wrist and squeezed. Lauren dropped the knife to the floor. Her knees buckled. Kathryn could hear the desperation in Lauren’s sobs, the frustration of someone who had looked endlessly for an opiate to her pain, only to have the cure end up being worse than the disease. She looked like a little girl, desperate not to accept a crushingly inevitable conclusion.

     When Kathryn sank down next to Lauren and enfolded her in her arms, the girl didn’t protest, but fell weakly against Kathryn’s chest and sobbed into her jacket. Kathryn couldn’t manage any words of sympathy or pity. Still, Eric’s justice seemed like pure cruelty.

     Maria had managed to bring one forearm to her forehead. Breaths whistled down her throat. Kathryn focused, seeing two other bodies— male or female, she couldn’t tell—lying facedown, pressed to the mattress by Maria’s weight. The young girl who had been lying across the doorway had managed to crawl to the top of the stairs. One arm weakly clawed the top step.

     Five. Including Lauren.