As I listened, I pushed memory away. Grace’s death grip on my hand helped with that, as did the judge. Mine had been male, sharp-voiced, and grim. This one was younger and seemed kinder. If she was a mother herself, we might have a leg up when it came to sympathy. I suspected Jay had fought to get her assigned to the case. That was how it worked.
Facing Chris, she asked if he understood the charges. He nodded. With a small smile and a tip of her head to the court reporter, she asked Chris to speak his reply for the record. Once he had, she read the charges. Jay’s influence showed here, too. In the course of multiple weekend calls, he had convinced the prosecutors to forego charges for each offending post, leaving only the two biggies. And they were big. As she read them, the words reverberated across the high ceilings of the near-empty room.
Chris pleaded not guilty. The judge ruled that the conditions of hisrelease were the same as previously established. She set a date one month later for a status conference to hear motions.
Five minutes. That was all it took. I held it together until we left the courtroom, but once the media closed in, threads of panic returned. I lowered my head, likely a mistake given the vulnerability it showed, and the press pounced on vulnerability like no tomorrow. Recorders were shoved in my face along with demands for my name, my take on the accused, the hearing, the crime itself.
I couldn’t have spoken if my life had depended on it. Jay hustled us along with a hand raised to fend off the press.
We were almost at the door when someone called my name—at least, I thought that was what I heard, though, upset as I was, it could have been any two-syllable shout with similar sounds. Whatever, it resembled Maggie, not Mackenzie, so it would have been someone from Devon. Everyone there knew Grace and I were friends. The only danger lay in a journalist picking up on my name.
Then again, it might have been Michael Shanahan.
Needing to know, I looked back. I didn’t see Michael, but I did see Ben Zwick. Tall and sandy-haired, he stood off to the side with a wounded air and his eyes locked on Grace.
***
I had another rough night. For starters, even though I knew it was asking for trouble, I’d felt compelled to surf every local news outlet, read what was there, and then click through to related stories. My face appeared often, and while I was always in the background and never identified by name, it was upending. The last thing I wanted was someone from my past connecting the dots, coming to Devon to check, and destroying what was left of my privacy.
That fear brought dreams, which played out during brief spurts of sleep. In one, I was having a seaweed wrap at the Spa, unable to move as clients entered the room and took selfies with me; in another, the playersin my Boston nightmare were trekking up Pepin Hill cradling semi-automatic weapons in their arms. There was an erotic dream that involved Edward and was frighteningly coherent. And then there was the one about Lily, which had nothing to do with the fear of exposure and everything to do with a loss so profound that, even sprawled in bed, I was brought to my knees. I could see her. She was hurt and crying for me, reaching for me, begging for me to help. But I couldn’t get to her. First there was an opaque wall that allowed nothing through but the sound of her increasingly shrill screams, then a dense web through which I could see a distorted view of her face, then, more cruelly, a piece of plastic wrap through which I could see and hear perfectly but not pass.
I’d had this one before. Many times. As always, I woke up alone in my bed, my house, my life. When I was first here, I would wake up in tears. Now when I woke, I simply struggled for air.Breathe in, breathe out, repeat. Breathe in, breathe out, repeat.
Leaving Jonah asleep on the bed, I went down to the living room. The cats followed. Actually, the cats led. Seeming to understand that I didn’t want to be alone, their warm little bodies crowded in, rubbing close, on my legs and in my lap the instant I curled up on the sofa. Burying my face in their fur, I held them for as long as they allowed.
No amount of makeup could hide what was inside, so while I looked outwardly normal entering the pottery studio, Kevin saw more. Half a dozen other potters were working and another had followed me up the stairs, which meant we couldn’t really talk, but that was fine. It was all about his hug. It was about taking my hand away from my hair when I went to touch my bangs for a third time in as many minutes. It was about indulging me when I did nothing but wedge. Oh, I thought about making a teapot, but my mother’s special today was butterscotch brownies, which seemed to demand a plate more than a pot, and a plate here would be empty. I thought about making a vase—the flower shop in town had fresh tulips—but my hands didn’t move. I even thought about making something Lily liked, like a harmless little bunny. My therapist had beenafter me to just ease up on purpose and design, and let the clay take me where it would. I hadn’t dared do that before. But I was already upset, so why not?
Apparently there was a reason why not, somewhere in the great subconscious, because I couldn’t get past wedging. And that was fine. If wedging was all I could do, I would wedge. I had always found the pulling, pushing, and slamming to be therapeutic, and it definitely was now. By the time I left the studio, I was feeling grounded.
The Spa reinforced that with its infusion of lemon verbena and, today, the whisper-soft melody of a harp.
As always, Joyce’s face lit up when she saw me. This time, though, with a small swing of her bob, she directed me to the sitting area. Michael Shanahan was rising from the sofa, resplendent in navy blazer, checked shirt, and a pink tie with little blue whales. His preppy soul was so out of place in a Zen world of scented candles, artfully angled cushions, and the tiny waterfalls that were part of the décor, that it might have been laughable, had the sight of him not brought a chill.
“Michael.” I was slightly breathless, the peace I had found at the pottery studio that quickly gone.
“Where can we talk?” he asked.
The makeup room was the obvious place, but his cologne—Burberry Brit, he had proudly announced when I commented on it once—had an unpleasant way of lingering there, and besides, I had a client in half an hour and still had to shower and dress. Hoping to keep the talk short, I gestured to the cushions he had just left. Joyce was the only one in sight, and her desk was out of earshot. Between the trickle of water and the strum of the harp, we would have privacy until new clients arrived. Their appearance would remind Michael that I had work to do.
Rather than sitting, he moved to the open area between the sofa and the soaring windows that made up the wall. I joined him there.
“What’s up?” I asked in a Spa-low voice, though I knew the answer too well. I had dared the devil, and here he was.
“I saw you in Rutland, Maggie. Why were you there?” He sounded personally aggrieved, like I’d disappointed him in a major way.
So he had been the one to call my name. It wasn’t a total surprise. Nor was it reassuring, given the power he held. But I wasn’t backing down. “Grace is my friend. She needed support. She had no one else.”
“She had her lawyer and her son. She didn’t need you, especially after I asked you to steer clear of her. Why didn’t you at least call me to get an okay?”
“I didn’t think I had to. I wasn’t leaving the state.”
He wrinkled his nose in distaste. “But this looks bad, Maggie, don’t you see? The kid did some awful stuff.”
“Not proven.”
“Not yet, but the charges wouldn’t be brought without evidence. And there you are all over the news? You’re putting me in a shitty position.”
I couldn’t muster sympathy for him. For Grace and Chris? Yes. Even, considering nightmares and fears, for me. But for Michael? No. He was being unreasonable, tone-deaf about the meaning of friendship. So maybe he didn’t know what it was. Maybe he didn’t have friends. That was cause for sympathy, I supposed.
