The older woman gave a doubtful harrumph. “Please don't call me that, Raine. You know it makes me feel old.”
Raine bit her lip at the familiar reproof. It had been a never-ending challenge to remember her mother's changing names over the years. She'd been grateful when Alix had decided to risk going back to her original name. Much simpler than getting used to a new one every couple of months.
Raine stared down at the autopsy report that lay on the telephone table, and made a swift decision. She took a deep breath, stomach fluttering. “Alix, I've been meaning to ask you something ...”
“Yes, honey?”
“Where is Dad buried?”
There was a horrified silence on the other end of the line. “God in heaven, Lorraine.” Alix's voice sounded strangled.
“It's a reasonable question. I just want to pay my respects. Leave some flowers.”
Raine waited for so long that she began to wonder if the line had been disconnected. When Alix finally spoke, her voice sounded very old. “I don't know.”
Raine's jaw dropped. “You don't—”
“We were out of the country, remember? We never went back. How could I know?”
How could you not know, Raine whispered inwardly. She pressed her hand against the heavy knot in her stomach. “I see.”
“I suppose you could find out through public registries,” her mother said vaguely. “Call the cemeteries. There must be a way.”
“Yes, there must be,” Raine echoed.
There was a choked, sniffling sound, and her mother spoke again, her voice fogged with tears. “Honey, we were in Positano, on the Amalfi Coast. Remember the Rossini kids you played with on the beach? Gaetano and Enza? That's where we were when we got the news. Call Mariangela Rossini. She was the one who had to call the doctor to sedate me when I heard. Call her, if you don't believe me.”
“Of course I believe you,” Raine soothed. “It's just that I keep having this dream—”
“Oh, God! Don't tell me you're getting dreams and reality mixed up like you did when you were little! That drove me crazy with worry! Do not tell me that, Lorraine!”
“All right,” Raine said tightly. “I'm not telling you that.” “Those are dreams, Lorraine! Not real! Do you hear me?” Raine flinched and held the phone away from her ear. “Yes,” she repeated. “Just dreams. Calm down, Alix.”
Alix sniffled loudly. “Tell me you haven't gone to Seattle to root around in old skeletons, honey! Let the past go. You're such a bright girl, so much potential! Tell me you're moving ahead, looking forward!”
“I'm moving ahead and looking forward,” Raine said dutifully.
“Don't you dare get smart with me, young lady”
“Sorry,” she muttered.
It took several careful minutes to soothe her mother's anxiety and get off the phone. When she finally hung up, she clutched her abdomen and abandoned the idea of making a sandwich. As usual, lying made her stomach clench into a tight, aching ball, but there was no alternative. She was engaging in the ultimate transgression. She was going to dig up all the skeletons she could, if she had to rent a backhoe to do it.
She shrugged off her coat and hung it up, pondering her mother's words. The days following her father's death were a grief-stricken blur in her memory, and by the time she started paying attention to her surroundings again, she had been hi a new country with a new name. But one thing was certain— she did not remember getting that news in Positano. Surely that was a moment that should have been etched hi her mind like engraved stone, every detail vivid and immutable.
She had never seen her father's real grave. Maybe seeing that it was different from the dream image would take the menace out of the dream.
Then again, what if the reality were identical?
Her stomach flip-flopped at the implications, and she shoved the creepy thought aside. This was no time to whip herself into a frenzy. She had too little nerve as it was. She had to concentrate on the positive. The encounter with Seth Mackey and Victor had finally set things in motion. This was good. This was progress. She had to decide what to wear tomorrow.
More to the point, she had to decide what to do tomorrow.
The excitement that surged inside her was so strong that she jumped up, laughing out loud. She went into the bedroom and stared searchingly into the mirror on the armoire, trying to imagine what Seth Mackey saw when he looked at her. Something he wanted, evidently, but she had a hard time imagining what it was. All she saw was plain old Raine, looking pale and spooked.
It was stupid and ill-timed to fall into lust right now, poised as she was on the edge of disaster, but hey, rotten timing and poor judgment had characterized her love life ever since it began. Look at Frederick Howe, and Juan Carlos. Those years of traveling had not been conducive to forming friendships or developing social skills. Eventually, Alix met and married Hugh Cameron, a stolid Scottish businessman. She and Raine settled in London with him, but by then the damage was done; Raine was painfully shy. The boys in her schools would have nothing to do with the tongue-tied, bespectacled girl with the tottering armful of novels.
The situation did not improve even when she went back to the States for college, and her unclaimed virginity began to weigh heavily upon her. Shortly after she turned twenty-four, she ran into Frederick Howe in Paris. He was a business associate of her stepfather's, a burly Englishman in his early thirties, pleasant and polite. He took her out to dinner, where he talked nonstop about himself. Still, he'd seemed nice, certainly safe and nonthreatening. After dinner, she had taken a deep breath and let him escort her back to her tiny little rented room.
It had proved to be a huge mistake. He had been clumsy and rough, crushingly heavy on top of her, his breath sour with garlic and wine. It finished almost before it began, which under the circumstances was a blessing, since it hurt, a lot. And while she was in the bathroom washing up, he left the flat without saying good-bye.
It had taken her eighteen months after that humiliation to work up the nerve to try again. She had met Juan Carlos during a summer studying Spanish in Barcelona. Heft been playing Bach on his cello in the park; slender and beautiful,
with melting brown eyes and curly Byronic locks, dressed to kill in Gucci and Prada, She was smitten with his elegance, his air of sensitivity. So different from the stolid Frederick, just the thing to soothe her braised romantic sensibilities.
But the moment to consummate their passion was never quite right for Juan Carlos. She'd been patient with his reluctance, coaxing and reassuring him, bolstering his ego. Finally he confessed to her that he suspected he was gay.
That summer she forged a deep and lasting friendship with him. He credited her for giving him the courage to confront the truth about his sexuality, which was all very well and good; she loved him tenderly and wished him happiness with all her heart. But it left her exactly where she'd been before. Restless and confused. Climbing the walls.
Shortly after that summer, the tombstone dream began to intensify. Her pent-up sexual energy was promptly relegated to second place on her list of problems, and then forgotten altogether.
Until now. It had made a spectacular comeback, at the worst possible time. It was maddening. All her life she had been buffeted about by external events that were hopelessly beyond her control. Now she was buffeted by internal forces that were even more frightening. Her fears, her dreams, her pulse-pounding reaction to Seth Mackey.
She took off her jacket and hung it up. Fear could be faced and overcome, she told herself bracingly, as she unhooked the skirt. She was doing her best to deal with the dreams. And as far as Seth Mackey was concerned, well, that was beyond fear. He belonged to the realm of unicorns and centaurs, demons and dragons. Where even she might find herself magically transformed.