“I have friends—”
“Not close ones.You won’t let any come close.And I doubt they’d want to.You have a dark side that’s off-putting.So you’re alone.”
“I choose to be alone.”
“Because to this day you’re insecure.Despite everything you’ve done and been, deep down inside you’re still insecure.”
“That’s crap.”
She shook her head.“I’ll bet you have nightmares about being little again, up in Timiny Cove, trying to please your father and failing.You never got over that, did you?You never got over the fact that you didn’t measure up to the standards he set.”She gave a bitter laugh that helped ease the knot slowly forming in her throat.“God, it’s ironic.If he’d lived, if he’d seen half of what you’ve done, he’d have been in awe.”
“If he’d lived,” John said in a stony way, “he wouldn’t have allowed me to do any of what I’ve done.I told him my ideas.He said it was all wrong.”
“He was conservative.He was frightened about taking as big a step as you wanted.He wasn’t sophisticated like you are.He didn’t have the vision, and when you tried to give it to him, he couldn’t see it.That was his limitation, John, not yours.In so many ways, you’re so much more than Eugene ever was—” She caught herself, stared at him, shook her head.“Do you hear me?”she asked in astonishment.“I’m defending you still.”The knot tightened in her throat.“I guess I’ll always do that.Just like you’ll always feel second best.It’s so much a part of you that you can’t give it up.You’ve lived so long with jealousy and hatred that you’d feel empty without it.”
She felt the first prick of tears in her eyes.She tried to will them away but she failed.“They’re the evil things, John, the jealousy and hatred.Not you.You’re not aninherently evil person, but you’ve let yourself be taken over.You’ve let yourself be emotionally stunted.And it’s made you miss out on so much.”
John stood with his legs apart and his features tight.“I’m not missing out on a thing.I have everything I want in life.”
“You do not.It’s sad.”
His eyes flashed.“There’s nothing sad about me.I have more than most people ever hope for.”
“You have nothing!You go to work.You come home, change your clothes, go out and come home again, and through it all you’re alone.”
“Look who’s talking.Are you any better?You’re not involved with anyone.You never have been.You work, go out, come home, and you’re alone.So who are you to criticize me?”
“But I don’t want to be alone!I never have, and I freely admit it!”
“So why do you do it?”
“Because I’ve been loving you all these years, waiting for you to love me back, only you can’t!You can’t love anyone!You’re too busy loving yourself, because you think that if you don’t, no one else will and you’ll have to go without.That’s the sad part.”Tears gathered on her lids, and her voice shrank.“But I can’t go on like this, John.I want more.I want someone to love me.I’m too old to have children.I blew that on you, too—not that you’d want children, because you’d see them as competition for your wife’s affections—and it may be that I’m too old to find someone to love me the way I want.But I can’t go on waiting for you this way, wondering whenyou’re going to come, holding my breath and praying.”In a splintered voice, she said, “It hurts too much.Loving you is too painful.”
His face blurred.She tossed a limp hand in the air and whispered, “I’m done with it.”Feeling drained and defeated, she turned and left.
John didn’t follow her.She wandered aimlessly through downtown Boston for a while before taking a cab to Logan and returning to New York.Rather than go straight to her apartment, she walked some, even stopped for dinner, since it was well past the hour.But she wasn’t hungry, and the loneliness of sharing a table with herself got to her.So she left without doing much more than picking at her food.
There were four messages on her answering machine.None of them was from John.
She grappled with her dilemma for hours and hours over the next few days.She didn’t answer her phone.If Arlan called with good news—either that John had relented and Templar wanted to go ahead with her book, or that Arlan was moving to another house and was taking the book with him as part of the deal—he would leave a message.But he didn’t call.
Nor did John.
Her loneliness had been bad before, but it was even worse now.Things were over with John.Really over.The emptiness she felt was just like the one she predicted John would feel if he ever let go of his jealousy and hatred.If he’d done that, she would have gladly filled the void in his life.He wasn’t doing it, though, and now she had a void in her own.
To fill it, she turned her attention back to her book.The only emotional energy she had seemed tied to it, and although she had neither a publisher nor a contract, she couldn’t just stop.She had to finish.She had to work John out of her life.
For several weeks, she wrote without a break.It was summertime in New York.Most of her friends were away, and the heat was oppressive enough to keep her indoors.She edited and polished, made calls to check her facts.If she planned to take her book to a new publisher, it had to besupergood.Everything had to be backed up so that John wouldn’t be able to pull the stunt he’d pulled with Templar.
Then the unexpected happened.She managed to track down Joe Grogan, the lawyer who had written Eugene’s will.She had assumed he had died, but in her effort to leave no stone unturned she followed a lead and found him retired and living in northern Arizona.On the phone, he was cordial and seemed perfectly lucid.He remembered Eugene well.
The next morning, she flew to Arizona.Grogan, not being an executor of Eugene’s estate, had had no way of knowing that Cutter had never received his bequest.He did remember the codicil, though, and made a sworn statement to that effect, witnessed by his ranch foreman and a local law officer.
Hillary returned to New York feeling both ebullient and terrified.She added Grogan’s statement to her book, but she was uneasy about it.It was disconcertingly real, evidence of a breach of the law.It was a potential firecracker.
For that matter, so was much of what she’d written.John had been right to want her to stop.She wasn’t just telling secrets; she was backing them up several times over.Perhaps because of her connection with Timiny Cove, she found people there who were willing to talk to her.Because of her connection with John, she likewise found people in his circle who opened up.She saw him more clearly than she ever had, and that picture emerged in her book.
Gradually she began to grasp what was in her hands.She had power.For the first time in her life, she had the means to move John in some way, shape, or fashion.It was a daunting realization.
