Michael’s Wife Read online

  They entered without knocking, Michael half dragging her behind him.

  “Your work. It’s … Michael, what on earth?” The woman with the husky voice stood next to the fireplace, a petite redhead in a green dress—the shade of green reminiscent of the painfully bristled lime-colored bush on the desert. “We … weren’t expecting you.” Her eyes widened under perfectly arched brows as she looked from Michael to Laurel, and Laurel felt awkward, shabby.

  As Michael brought her forward into the room, a slight man rose from behind a desk, adjusting thick glasses to peer at them.

  “My sister-in-law, Janet. My brother, Paul. I don’t believe you’ve met them,” Michael said. And then with that soft stinging reproach of his, “This is Laurel.”

  There was a long silence while everyone gaped at her as though wishing her to vanish under the rug.

  “Laurel! Not …? Oh, no.” Janet sat heavily in the nearest chair. “I thought she was dead … or something.”

  “Do you think it was wise to bring her here, Michael?” Paul Devereaux had the same pale eyes as his brother but lacking the impact and magnified by thick lenses.

  “What was I supposed to do with her?”

  “Where has she been? Do you propose that she stay here?”

  “I don’t know where she’s been. Right now I don’t want to. She’ll stay here until I decide what to do with her.”

  “Of course. I just don’t want any.…”

  “Any what, Paul?” Michael’s grip on her arm tightened.

  “I don’t want any violence. You’re obviously angry. You have every right to be. But you must be careful of your temper, Michael.”

  “Then don’t sermonize! I’m taking her upstairs. She hasn’t met everyone yet.” He dragged her from the room as suddenly as he’d dragged her in.

  She hadn’t said a word but, like a naughty child, had been talked about and not to. What was this about? There was no time to worry about it as she stumbled after him up the broad staircase and along a corridor.

  He opened a door and pushed her through ahead of him, releasing her wrist and pressing a light switch. It was a bedroom big enough to house Raymond McBride’s café, with room to park Harley’s truck. A deep red area rug spread over polished parquet. The giant bed with double headboards sat between two narrow windows, its coverlet red with outlines in white of wild horses and stolid conquistadores racing back and forth across it. She would have loved to stretch out on that bed and cry. But not next to Michael Devereaux.

  He put his cap on the dresser, unbuttoned his coat, and turned to her, the pale intense eyes in the dark face looking enormous, almost hypnotic. “I think it’s time you faced the music.”

  She backed away as he moved between her and the door.

  “He’s here, Laurel. He’s in the next room.”

  “Who? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You’re going to carry your little masquerade to the finish, aren’t you? Well, let’s see if you can keep it up. Move.” The room was L-shaped and he motioned her around the corner past the bed where this fantastic room continued to another door. She moved swiftly to avoid a shove.

  The adjoining bedroom was smaller and more crowded, with a picture of the Madonna over the bed. It was narrow and opened into an L about halfway between them and the bed. A woman came around the corner just as Michael Devereaux was closing the door.

  “Claire, I’ve brought.…” But Michael was cut off by another figure careening around the corner, giggling and screeching.

  “Daddy!” A little boy wearing only diapers lurched into Michael’s arms. He hugged the child and the Teddy bear he clasped.

  Laurel felt the floor begin to move under her feet.

  “Claire, this is Laurel.”

  She was getting used to the shock her name caused in people, but Claire’s was the strangest yet. A red blush rose up Claire’s neck and onto her face through a funny mist that began to swirl around the swaying room.

  “Well, aren’t you even interested in seeing him? Haven’t you ever wondered what he looked like? Look at him.” And Michael shoved the little face close to hers.

  “Lady, Daddy.”

  “This is your mother, Jimmy.” There was no reaction from the child who began tugging at the medals on Michael’s jacket.

  Laurel grabbed a chair and sat in it before it could spin out of her reach. “There’s been some mistake … this is all a mistake. I couldn’t have …”

  “Oh, no, this is the same baby. The only mistake is that this poor kid was even born. Look at him.” The child was blond and smelled of powder.

  “You can’t tell me that I had a baby.…”

  Michael towered above her in the swirling mist. “What kind of a woman are you? Don’t you even feel ashamed?”

  “Pay truck me, Daddy?”

  “No, son, I want you to meet this lady. She’s your mother, Jimmy. God, doesn’t he even know what that is? Hasn’t anybody around here explained?”

  “We thought it was better not to, Michael, not yet,” Claire said from a long way off, her voice reverberating out of the roaring mist.

  “Lady sick, Daddy.”

  “Michael, she’s falling!”

  And just as she hit the floor she was scooped up and carried back into the next room where Michael laid her on the bed. The mist blended with red and green lights behind her eyelids and her head ached again. Got to get out of here. Mistake … mistake. She didn’t know if she’d spoken out loud. They were talking about her as she fought down the nausea and tried to open her eyes.

  “Why did you bring her here?”

  “I didn’t know what to do with her, Claire. I guess I wanted to see her face when she saw Jimmy.”

  “Where did you find her?”

  “She called me from some flea-bitten motel in Phoenix. Didn’t even have a suitcase.”

  “Michael, she didn’t want you or Jimmy. You’ve got every right to throw her out. You shouldn’t even have brought her here.” Claire’s voice sounded shrill and possessive.

  “She is my wife.”

  “She’ll just do more harm. Take her back to Phoenix and dump her like she dumped Jimmy.”

  “She’s sick. God knows what she’s been doing. Let’s get Jimmy to bed; he shouldn’t be up so late, Claire.”

  A door closed and the room was silent. She kept her eyes shut in case they should return. There had been a terrible mistake. Or was it a cruel hoax? But these people seemed so sincere in their hatred. Their shock was real. Laurel had deserted her husband and child, and she must look very much like this Laurel. She’d almost been convinced that she was Laurel, had even started thinking of herself as Laurel.

  But I’ve never had a baby. That much I do know.

  When she opened her eyes, the lights were out except for the one in the bathroom behind a half-closed door. She’d slept and someone had covered her with a blanket and laid a frilly white gown across the bed. She turned her head, afraid she wasn’t alone, but Michael Devereaux did not sleep beside her.

  Sitting up, she found her headache gone and with it the dreamlike indecision. She was through being slugged and dragged around, being introduced to another woman’s past sins. I’ll go to the police. They’ll find out who I am and keep me safe from Michael. She should be able to walk into Tucson if she could get out that gate or over the wall. I should have gone to the police in the first place. It felt good to be taking positive action at last.

  She crept to the door and was surprised to find that it opened to moonlight, a balcony of some sort. More doors in this place. She’d go out the way she’d come in so as not to lose her way.

  Perhaps she’d take another look at the child just to be sure. He was not her child, but she hadn’t really had a good look at him. All seemed quiet as she listened at the door of the adjoining room.

  A miniature train and a stuffed giraffe lay on the bed, a small TV set sat on the dresser with a dimly lit lamp next to it. Around the corner of the L sh
e found the crib and the sleeping child. Nothing had been done to make this a child’s room; he’d merely been added to it as if he were a temporary guest.

  He slept on his stomach, one thumb in his mouth, fine blond hair damp against his forehead. As she bent to cover him she disturbed his sleep and he mumbled something unintelligible, turning his head to the other side and switching thumbs automatically. The crumpled Teddy bear was pushed farther into the corner.

  An appealing child, sturdy and healthy-looking. She guessed him to be two or three years old. How could Laurel have left him motherless? And if Laurel looked so much like her, how could she and Michael have had such a fair child? She reached down to touch a cheek the texture of warm silk. The eyes of the Madonna in the picture over the bed seemed to bore into her back as she left the room.

  Well, he doesn’t look like me, that’s for sure. But it was funny how she kept forgetting her own image. She checked it again in the bathroom mirror. Every time she looked at herself it seemed a new experience. And the face never attempted to mirror her emotions. Her hair was dark brown and matched her eyes. Her skin was more pale than fair. There was a slight swelling around the scratch on her cheek where Michael’s watch had caught her.

  On an impulse she lowered her slacks and panties to her knees and examined her hips and thighs carefully. Faint white lines ran along the outer side of each pelvic bone.

  She ran a finger over one of the lines as if to erase it.

  I could have been very fat at one time, and she looked up into wide staring eyes, the mouth below them opening as the marble image finally cracked, or very pregnant.

  3

  Laurel crept through a silent house. Carved wooden doors moved quietly on massive hinges to display cool, echoing rooms that dwarfed even the heavy furniture. She found herself looking over her shoulder, closing doors carefully.

  Thick off-white walls. High ceilings with dark stained beams. Archways. And all the windows barred on the outside by black metal grillwork. It could have been a palatial prison.

  The sun had been high when she’d awakened in her borrowed gown. No one had disturbed her sleep or called her for breakfast. It was as if everyone had vacated the house in horror at her presence there.

  Her feet made no sound on the lush carpeting of the staircase that broadened into a sweeping curve to meet the polished tile of the entry hall. An inlaid sunburst in oranges, pinks, yellows, disturbed the even pattern of the tiled floor and spread from the base of the stairs to the far wall. It looked as if it had been removed intact from some ancient temple across the border.

  She hesitated at the bottom of the stairs, searching the shadows that lined the walls, created by carved chests or straight-backed chairs with dark tooled-leather seats. The fear of some unremembered thing that had sent her racing across the desert to Harley’s truck had not left her. It was here, miles away, in this house, too. Why?

  She had half-crossed the sunburst when she stopped again. Was it because this was Michael Devereaux’s home?

  There was no sound of life downstairs.

  Moving to the double doors opposite the stairs, she entered a salon at the front of the house, its ceiling open to the roof, its two-story windows draped in dark green velvet. The smell of furniture oil hung in the air. Couches and chairs in rich brocades clustered around the tables on thick-piled area rugs. Any one of the rugs could have carpeted a normal room from wall to wall.

  A house the size of this one would soak up sound. That’s why it was so quiet. She stood in the middle of the intimidating room and rubbed her scalp beneath her hair where the throbbing was hardest and again her mind seemed so full of memory. Nothing before yesterday morning, but every event since then bulged with detail. The way Michael’s lips had curled when he’d said, “Laurel, I once promised myself that if I ever saw you again I would kill you!”

  She hurried away from that memory to the fireplace at the far end of the room and forced herself to study the hunting scene above the mantel. The picture was too small and somehow inadequate for its place of honor.

  Spiral stairs at this end of the room led to the balcony of the second floor, a narrower continuation of the balcony in the hall. Behind the stairs a small door opened into Paul’s study where she’d met the Devereaux’ the night before.

  “You must be careful of your temper, Michael,” Paul had said from behind that desk.…

  She ran across the silent study and through the door to the entry hall. The house had that eerie quality of a museum at night. Nowhere did a book lie open on a table, a child’s toy peek from under a chair. Everything was polished and in its place, ready for the curious visitor.

  Doors stood open to sunlight at the end of the hall, and she assumed this to be the back of the house but found instead an open courtyard completely surrounded by more house. Arcaded walkways sheltered the rectangle of the courtyard, the arches and columns with their shadows giving a cloistered effect. Black iron pots filled with leafy plants hung in the arches. Earthen jars with flowering plants and ornamental trees interspersed with stone couches and wicker chairs lined the walls.

  Out in the sunlight a fountain splashed in a near corner and at the other end was a full-sized swimming pool. Misshapen gnarled trees twisted toward the sun past the upper story, their roots humping and cracking the pink flagstone paving.

  She turned a corner of the walkway and halfway down one side of the rectangle she was stopped by an unmistakable screeching. It was the kitchen, and Jimmy sat in a highchair carefully dumping the contents of a bowl onto the floor. Am I really that child’s mother?

  The woman, Claire, rushed across the room to grab it, but too late. She looked harried, lank hair falling across her face as she lifted him from the chair. “No more lunch for you. You did that on purpose; you’re a bad boy.”

  “Bad boy,” Jimmy repeated as if he’d heard it often.

  “He is only a baby, Miss Bently.” An old woman in a voluminous black dress appeared from the dark recesses of the kitchen and knelt to mop the floor with a rag.

  “Don’t spoil him, Consuela. He’s a monster already.”

  Laurel stepped hesitantly into the kitchen from the doorway. “May I have some coffee?”

  “Oh, you’re up, are you? Well, lunch is about ready. You might as well skip breakfast,” Claire said, her expression haughty, her eyes rimmed with red. “This is … Jimmy’s mother, Consuela.”

  The old woman rose heavily from her knees and came toward Laurel. There were still streaks of black in her gray hair. “Michael’s wife! So, you have come at last, Mrs. Michael. I have waited long for this day.” Her dark eyes, lined with wrinkles, were expressionless in a sagging face. Roughened hands clutched and unclutched the sopping rag.

  Another person to hate her in this house that did not welcome her? Laurel couldn’t blame any of them. If she was guilty of what they said, she deserved only hatred.

  “It’s a nap for you, bad boy.” Claire carried Jimmy to the door and then stopped to look back, her small slightly pear-shaped figure unenhanced by the full skirt and rounded droop of her shoulders. “If you’re wondering where Michael is, he went back to the base last night. He didn’t trust himself to stay in the same house with you.”

  Lunch consisted of salads, at least six different kinds, with hot rolls and coffee. They ate at a small table out on the sun-warmed flagstone of the courtyard, where the swimming pool, lined in blue tiled patterns, reflected the sunlight so intensely that it hurt the eyes.

  Consuela served them silently, staring openly at Laurel. Everyone else avoided looking at her. Paul leafed through a folder of papers. Janet studied the day’s mail, and Claire concentrated on her salad. There was a kind of fidgety silence at the table as if they were all thinking the same thing and wanted to talk about it but were unable to find a civil way to do so. The statue of a half-dog, half-lion creature glared at her from the center of a nearby fountain, water trickling from its snarling jaws.

  This was her first meal in tw
enty-four hours, but Laurel’s stomach would tolerate only the rolls, a little fruit, and coffee. She felt out of place in her messy clothes. The tear in her slacks had widened and her sandals were still gritty from her desert walk.

  Janet finally laid down a letter and looked directly at her. “Dear Michael will leave his little problems on our doorstep, won’t he?”

  “Janet!” Paul Devereaux’s scanty mustache had acquired a quiver.

  “Well, for heaven’s sake. First Jimmy and now her. What else will he present us with out of the blue? I’m not running a home for bedraggled castoffs.”

  “This is Michael’s home as well as yours; he has every right to house his family here.”

  “Of course. And how nice that we can care for them while he goes off to play soldier.” Janet’s polished fingernails tapped the glass-topped table and then pretended to rearrange burnished hair where not one of the elegantly chiseled ringlets was out of place. She wore button earrings and full makeup that could not hide the creases at the outer corners of her eyes or the lines on her forehead.

  “I suppose we shall have to do something about your clothes, Laurel. We can’t have the mother of the Devereaux heir parading around in tatters, can we? I’m afraid Tucson hasn’t much to offer, but then anything would be an improvement. Claire will take you in this afternoon.”

  “Why do I have to do it?” Claire lifted a sullen face from her salad.

  “She’s right, Janet. Claire gets all the odd jobs around here. She was hired as a secretary, you know. Can’t you do it?”

  “Nonsense. Claire would just love to do something nice for Michael’s dear wife. Wouldn’t you, Claire?”

  And Claire retreated to her salad, the blush once again spreading up her throat to her face.

  “I … don’t want to be any trouble.”

  “Trouble? Nonsense, Laurel. Long-lost wives drop in on us every day. Although I don’t know how I’m to explain this to our friends. I had just let it be understood that you were dead.”